Budapest, Hungary: Hungary’s parliament on Monday passed an amendment to the constitution that allows the government to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities, a decision that can contain the immoral practices spread by the LGBTQ+ group in the name of freedom.
The amendment, which required a two-thirds vote, passed along party lines with 140 votes for and 21 against. It was proposed by the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Ahead of the vote – the final step for the amendment – opposition politicians and other protesters attempted to blockade the entrance to a parliament parking garage. Police physically removed demonstrators, who had used zip ties to bind themselves together.
The amendment declares that children’s rights to moral, physical and spiritual development supersede any right other than the right to life, including that to peacefully assemble. Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors aged under 18.
The amendment codifies a law fast-tracked through parliament in March that bans public events held by LGBTQ+ communities, including the popular Pride event in Budapest that draws thousands annually.
That law also allows authorities to use facial recognition tools to identify people who attend prohibited events – such as Budapest Pride – and can come with fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546).
Hungary’s government has campaigned against LGBTQ+ communities in recent years, and argues its “child protection” policies, which forbid the availability to minors of any material that mentions homosexuality, are needed to protect children from what it calls “woke ideology” and “gender madness.”
The new amendment also states that the constitution recognizes two sexes, male and female, an expansion of an earlier amendment that prohibits same-sex adoption by stating that a mother is a woman and a father is a man.
The declaration provides a constitutional basis for denying the gender identities of transgender people, as well as ignoring the existence of intersex individuals who are born with sexual characteristics that do not align with binary conceptions of male and female.
In a statement on Monday, government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács wrote that the change is “not an attack on individual self-expression, but a clarification that legal norms are based on biological reality.”
Döbrentey, the lawyer, said it was “a clear message” for transgender and intersex people: “It is definitely and purely and strictly about humiliating people and excluding them, not just from the national community, but even from the community of human beings”
The amendment is the 15th to Hungary’s constitution since Orbán’s party unilaterally authored and approved it in 2011.
The amendment passed Monday also allows for Hungarians who hold dual citizenship in a non-European Economic Area country to have their citizenship suspended for up to 10 years if they are deemed to pose a threat to public order, public security or national security.
In a speech laden with conspiracy theories in March, Orbán compared people who work for such groups to insects, and pledged to “eliminate the entire shadow army” of foreign-funded “politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists.”
