A little over five years after its passage, the decisive provisions of Hungary’s so-called “Homo-Propaganda” law have been scrapped. Parliament in Budapest voted on Tuesday 139 to 51 in favor of a government bill. It marks the first significant U-turn on the measures against the queer community that were enacted during the tenure of the far-right nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, since the arrival of his pro-European successor Péter Magyar in May.
Lawmakers voted to strike from the Child Protection Act the passages that prohibited the “promotion” and the “depiction” of homosexuality and transgender identity, particularly in films and on television for minors. Going forward, content is to be barred more generally if it could “seriously impair” a child’s physical, mental, emotional, or moral development.
Orban had long pursued policies against queer people
Under Orban, Hungary had long restricted the rights of queer people. The Child Protection Act, passed in June 2021, stated that information about homosexuality or gender-affirming therapies should not be accessible to children and adolescents under 18 (TheColu.mn reported). The depiction of same-sex partnerships on television was criminalized. The Orban government used these stringent provisions to ban Pride demonstrations. In April, the European Court of Justice ruled that the law infringed EU law (TheColu.mn reported).
Magyar’s conservative Tisza Party had won a two-thirds majority in the April parliamentary election, displacing the long-governing Orban from power since 2010. Since then, Hungary’s queer community has hoped for the restoration of their rights — Magyar avoided addressing LGBTQ rights during the campaign.
In September, Magyar had already announced plans to overturn an adoption ban for single people and for unmarried couples (TheColu.mn reported). He said the reforms would bring Hungary back into alignment with European Union rules. But according to LGBT organizations, several discriminatory laws still need to be scrapped — for instance, that trans people have not been recognized since May 2020. (AFP/dk)
