Pride events are one of the main ways LGBTQI+ people assert visibility and demand equality. Since the late 1960s, LGBTQI+ people and allies have held annual gatherings and marches in city centres to celebrate victories, defy setbacks and stand in solidarity with those whose rights are most strongly denied. But that’s just got harder in Hungary, where a new law threatens to curb the public presence that’s an essential part of Pride and push people back into the closet.

On 18 March, Hungary’s parliament passed a law that effectively bans public Pride events. The bill amended the country’s law on assemblies to make it an offence to organise or attend events that violate Hungary’s anti-LGBTQI+ ‘child protection’ law, which bans what it calls the depiction or promotion of homosexuality to those under 18.

Under the new law, people who participate in Pride events risk being fined, and those who organise them could face a year in jail. The law also allows the authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants. It was rushed through parliament in just one day, leaving no chance to campaign against it. The law comes into force on 15 April. Its evident target is Budapest Pride, the annual gathering of tens of thousands in Hungary’s capital.

Politicised homophobia

The 2021 law that ostensibly exists to protect children was introduced to attack LGBTQI+ people. It makes it a crime to share any information about LGBTQI+ issues with people under 18, including in bookshops, media and schools. In doing so, it isolates young people who may be struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation or gender identity in socially conservative contexts, denying them a vital lifeline. It essentially equates adults trying to offer young people advice with paedophiles intent on corrupting them.

Complaints about alleged breaches of the 2021 law have been widespread. Pride marches and films have been reported due to the presence of under-18s. Booksellers have been fined for selling books with LGBTQI+ content without wrapping them in a plastic cover to conceal their contents, as the law requires. TV channels have refused to show adverts for Budapest Pride. In 2023, the government sacked the National Museum’s director for allowing under 18-year-olds to visit a World Press Photo exhibition that included some LGBTQI+ content. Groups that teach about citizenship and human rights in schools have been denied access unless they promised they wouldn’t touch on LGBTQI+ issues.

It’s no coincidence that Hungary’s attack on LGBTQI+ rights by falsely associating them with paedophilia mirrors the approach taken by Vladimir Putin in Russia. In 2023, Russia tightened its 2013 law that banned what it calls ‘gay propaganda’, making it illegal to praise LGBTQI+ relationships, publicly express diverse sexual orientations or suggest they’re normal.

Putin and Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán are close allies, and they attack LGBTQI+ rights for the same reason: to scapegoat LGBTQI+ people and portray their identities and advocacy for rights as part of an alleged imported western agenda of ‘gender ideology’ designed to undermine what they characterise as traditional national and family values.

It’s a line of political attack favoured by right-wing populists and nationalists around the world as a way of scapegoating a minority and appealing to socially conservative support bases. And it’s easy to see what motivates Orbán. He’s been in power since 2010, but is in danger of losing next year’s election amid an economic downturn. The opposition Tisza Party is currently ahead in the polls. Orbán’s latest attack on LGBTQI+ people is a desperate attempt to shore up his support base and stem defections to the opposition. It’s part of a broader white supremacist, Christian, nationalist and anti-European Union (EU) agenda Orbán has increasingly fallen back on to stay in power and keep his political alliance together.

Hungary now scores only 51 out of 100 points on Equaldex’s Equality Index, which ranks countries according to how LGBTQI+-friendly they are. The country scores particularly low on the public opinion part of the index. The government has instrumentalised and inflamed homophobic sentiment, including through its control of most media, to enable rollbacks in the legal recognition of rights. Every time the government passes a repressive law, it becomes easier to express and act out homophobia. Hate speech and violence against LGBTQI+ people have soared, as they always do when laws and top-down political vilification give the green light to bigotry.

The EU needs to act

Orbán intends to go still further. He plans to change the constitution to give the right of children to what he calls ‘physical, psychological and moral development’ priority over most other rights, including fundamental civic freedoms. This means that, according to the government, the right of children not to be exposed to LGBTQI+ ideas trumps people’s rights to protest and speak out. Orbán also plans to constitutionally ban any legal recognition of gender other than biological sex assigned at birth.

As attacks have intensified, the annual Budapest Pride has served as a vital rallying point for people to show they won’t be isolated and communicate their defiance. Attendance has been strong in recent years, despite homophobic counter-protests. That’s made it the next target.

In response to the new law, people have taken to the streets to defend their right to take part in Pride. Several thousands protested in Budapest when the law was passed, and people continue to take part in weekly demonstrations. All eyes are now on 28 June, when Budapest Pride celebrates its 30^th anniversary. Orbán’s latest assault on rights may backfire. More people, including those who don’t identify as LGBTQI+ but deplore attacks on rights may join in and show their support.

There’s a great need to protect Budapest Pride, not least because Hungary risks setting a dangerous precedent for other European states that want to restrict LGBTQI+ people’s rights to take public action. Similar laws can’t be ruled out in other countries. It wouldn’t be the first time other right-wing nationalist politicians follow Orbán’s lead in attacking LGBTQI+ rights as a political strategy. Last year, for example, Georgia’s government – the focus of mass protests against repression and withdrawal from EU accession negotiations – passed an anti-LGBTQI+ law similar to those in Hungary and Russia.

Twenty-two embassies of European states reacted to Hungary’s latest law by expressing their concern. Orbán is used to dismissing such criticism as western imperialist interference. But he may find it harder to ignore EU proceedings currently underway. In 2022, the European Commission sent a case to the EU Court of Justice on the grounds that the 2021 anti-LGBTQI+ law violates the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Civil society campaigned for states to join the lawsuit, and 16 have done so, along with the European Parliament. The court is expected to issue its ruling later this year. It must hold Orbán to account – and the EU must also act now on this latest attack on LGBTQI+ rights.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org