Hungary's new anti-LGBTQ+ law bans Pride events and sparks protests

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — A new anti-LGBTQ+ law banning Pride events and allowing authorities to use facial recognition software to identify those attending the festivities was passed in Hungary on Tuesday, leading to a large demonstration on the streets of Budapest.

Several thousand protesters chanting anti-government slogans gathered after the vote outside Hungary’s parliament. They later staged a blockade of the Margaret Bridge over the Danube, blocking traffic and disregarding police instructions to leave the area.

The move by Hungarian lawmakers is part of a crackdown on the country's LGBTQ+ community by the nationalist-populist party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.

The measure, which is reminiscent of similar restrictions against sexual minorities in Russia, was passed in a 136-27 vote. The law, supported by Orbán's Fidesz party and their minority coalition partner the Christian Democrats, was pushed through parliament in an accelerated procedure after being submitted on Monday.

Opposing legislators led a vivid protest in the legislature involving rainbow-colored smoke bombs.

At the protest outside parliament, Evgeny Belyakov, a Russian citizen who immigrated to Hungary after facing repression in Russia, said the legislation went at the heart of people's rights to peacefully assemble.

“It's quite terrifying to be honest, because we had the same in Russia. It was building up step by step, and I feel like this is what is going on here,” he said. “I just only hope that there will be more resistance like this in Hungary, because in Russia we didn’t resist on time and now it’s too late.”

What does the law say?

The bill amends Hungary's law on assembly to make it an offense to hold or attend events that violate Hungary's contentious "child protection" legislation, which prohibits the "depiction or promotion" of homosexuality to minors under 18.

Attending a prohibited event will carry fines up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546), which the state must forward to “child protection,” according to the text of the law. Authorities may use facial recognition tools to identify individuals attending a prohibited event.

In a statement on Monday after lawmakers first submitted the bill, Budapest Pride organizers said the aim of the law was to “scapegoat” the LGBTQ+ community in order to silence voices critical of Orbán’s government.

“This is not child protection, this is fascism,” wrote the organizers of the event, which attracts thousands each year and celebrates the history of the LGBTQ+ movement while asserting the equal rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Following the law's passage Tuesday, Budapest Pride spokesperson Jojó Majercsik told The Associated Press that despite Orbán's yearslong effort to stigmatize LGBTQ+ people, the organization had received an outpouring of support since the Hungarian leader hinted in February that his government would take steps to ban the event.

"Many, many people have been mobilized," Majercsik said. “It's a new thing, compared to the attacks of the last years, that we've received many messages and comments from people saying, ‘Until now I haven’t gone to Pride, I didn't care about it, but this year I'll be there and I'll bring my family.'”

Government crackdown

The new legislation is the latest step against LGBTQ+ people taken by Orbán, whose government has passed other laws that rights groups and other European politicians have decried as repressive against sexual minorities.

In 2022, the European Union's executive commission filed a case with the EU's highest court against Hungary's 2021 child protection law. The European Commission argued that the law "discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity."

Hungary’s “child protection” law — aside from banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors, including in television, films, advertisements and literature — also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programs, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”

Booksellers in Hungary have faced hefty fines for failing to wrap books that contain LGBTQ+ themes in closed packaging. Critics have argued Orbán's campaign amounts to an attempt to cut LGBTQ+ visibility, and that by tying it to child protection, it falsely conflates homosexuality with pedophilia.

Hungary’s government argues that its policies are designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda.”

Is Orbán trying to distract the electorate?

Hungary's methods resemble tactics by Putin, who in December 2022 expanded Russia's ban on "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" from minors to adults, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities.

Orbán, in power since 2010, faces an unprecedented challenge from a rising opposition party as Hungary’s economy struggles to emerge from an inflation and cost of living crisis and an election approaches in 2026.

Tamás Dombos, a project coordinator at Hungarian LGBTQ+ rights group Háttér Society, said that Orbán's assault on minorities was a tactic to distract voters from more important issues facing the country. He said allowing the use of facial recognition software at prohibited demonstrations could be used against other protests the government chooses to deem unlawful.

“It's a very common strategy of authoritarian governments not to talk about the real issues that people are affected by: the inflation, the economy, the terrible condition of education and health care,” Dombos said.

Orbán, he continued, “has been here with us for 15 years lying into people's faces, letting the country rot basically, and then coming up with these hate campaigns.”