Hungary, government introduces bill to ban Pride in Budapest

Brussels – Despite the condemnations of Brussels, the Magyar executive continues to persecute Hungary’s Lgbt community and, after years of attacks, aims to ban the country’s most emblematic rainbow rights event, Budapest Pride. 

Today (March 17), to the outrage of civil rights groups, several members of the governing coalition submitted a bill to parliament that would ban the Budapest Pride event and authorise city authorities to use facial recognition software to identify any participants. Attending the event will also result in fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints (about 500 euros), which the state will earmark for “child protection.” The coalition currently holds a two-thirds majority in the legislative assembly, which implies that the bill will almost certainly become law. 

The ban on the pride, which celebrates its 30th edition this year, is only the latest in a series of measures that go in the direction of homophobia and transphobia: several previous laws, adopted in 2020, had banned same-sex couples from adopting children and eliminated legal recognition of transgender people. The government of Viktor Orban has always presented itself as a champion of the values typical of the traditional family and Christian civilization, threatened by what is called “gender madness.” In this spirit, the Child Protection law was enacted in 2021, aimed at combating “deviations of morality” by banning the “depiction and promotion” of homosexuality in contexts available to minors, including literature, film, and television. As early as February, Orban declared his intention to ban pride.