Budapest, Hungary – Hungary Parliament approved on Monday an amendment to the Constitution that allows the Government to prohibit the public events of LGBTQ communities, a decision that legal academics and critics call another step towards authoritarianism by the populist government.
The amendment, which required a two -third vote, approved the line lines with 140 votes and 21 against. It was proposed by the Fidesz-KDNP ruling coalition led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Before the vote, the final step for the amendment, the opposition politicians and other protesters tried to block the entrance to a parking lot of the Parliament. Police physically eliminated protesters, who had used lying to join.
The amendment declares that the rights of children to moral, physical and spiritual development replace any other right other than the right to life, including that to meet peacefully. The controversial legislation of “child protection” of Hungary prohibits the “representation or promotion” of homosexuality to children under 18 years.
The amendment encodes an accelerated law to Parliament in March that prohibits public events held by LGBTQ communities, including the popular pride event in Budapest that attracts thousands annually.
This law also allows the authorities to use facial recognition tools to identify people who attend prohibited events, such as Budapest’s pride, and can come with fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian Forints ($ 546).
Dávid Bedő, a legislator of the party at the time of the opposition who participated in the attempted blocking, said before the vote that Orbán and Fidesz during the last 15 years have dismantled democracy and the rule of law, and in the last two or three months, we see that this process has accelerated. “
He said as the elections approach in 2026 and the Orbán party is left behind in the surveys behind a new and popular opposition challenger: “They will do everything in their possession to stay in power.”
Opposition legislators used aerial horns to interrupt the vote, which continued after a few moments.
The Hungarian government has campaigned against LGBTQ communities in recent years, and argues that its “child protection” policies, which prohibit the availability of minors of any material that mentions homosexuality, are necessary to protect children from what it calls “aroused ideology” and “gender madness.”
Critics say that measures do little to protect children and are being used to distract themselves from more serious problems that the country faces and mobilize the orbán right base before the elections.
“All this effort we see launched by the Government, has nothing to do with the rights of children,” said Dánel Döbrentey, a lawyer for the Hungarian civil liberties union, qualifying it as “pure propaganda.”
The Constitution recognizes two sexes
The new amendment also establishes that the Constitution recognizes two sexes, men and women, an expansion of an anterior amendment that prohibits the adoption of same sex by affirming that a mother is a woman and a father is a man.
The declaration provides a constitutional basis to deny the gender identities of transgender people, as well as to ignore the existence of intersex individuals that are born with sexual characteristics that are not aligned with the binary conceptions of men and women.
In a statement on Monday, the government spokesman, 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 intersexual people: “It is definitely about humiliating people and excluding them, not only from the national community, but even of the community of human beings.”
The amendment is the 15 of the Hungarian Constitution since the Orbán party wrote it and approved it unilaterally in 2011.
Facial recognition to identify protesters
Aldá Remport, a HCLU lawyer, said that while Hungary has used facial recognition tools since 2015 to help the police in criminal investigations and find missing persons, the recent law that prohibits pride allows technology to be used in a much broader and more problematic way. That includes to monitor and deter political protests.
“One of the most fundamental problems is its invasiveness, only the scale of the intrusion that occurs when mass surveillance applies to a crowd,” Remport said.
“More prominent in this case is the effect on the freedom of assembly, specifically the chilling effect that arises when people are afraid to leave and show their political or ideological beliefs for fear of being persecuted,” he added.
Suspension of citizenship
The amendment approved on Monday also allows the Hungarians who have double citizenship in a non -European economic country to suspend their citizenship for up to 10 years if they consider that they represent a threat to public order, public security or national security.
Hungary has taken measures in recent months to protect his national sovereignty of what states that they are foreign efforts to influence his policy or even overthrow the Orbán government.
The self -denominated “iliberal” leader has accelerated his long -standing efforts to take energetic measures against critics such as the media and groups dedicated to civil rights and anti -corruption, which he has undermined Hungary’s sovereignty by receiving financial assistance from international donors.
In a speech full of conspiracy theories in March, Orbán compared the people who work for such groups with insects, and committed to “eliminate the entire Army of the Shadow” of “politicians, judges, journalists, Pseudo-Ngo and political activists financed on the foreigner.
