When, earlier this year, Hungary voted to ban the country’s LGBTQ+ Pride march, under the guise of protecting children from gay-lifestyle propaganda, few doubted the measure breached the constitution’s protection of freedom of assembly. The ban made it an offence to hold or attend events that violate contentious “child protection” legislation which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors aged under 18.
And so, on Monday, to forestall legal challenges, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling nationalist Fidesz party MPs, in the face of widespread national and international protests, amended the constitution to give special protection to children’s rights to moral, physical and spiritual development ahead of any right, including freedom of assembly, other than the right to life.
The amendment also declares that “a person’s sex at birth is a biological characteristic and can be either male or female”, an expansion of an earlier prohibition of same-sex adoption that ruled that a mother is a woman and a father is a man. It also provides a constitutional basis for denying the gender identities of transgender people, and ignoring the existence of intersex individuals.
The amendment is unlikely to pass muster with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) where Hungary is already facing a separate European Commission case, backed by 15 member states including Ireland, challenging the 2021 “Child Protection Act”. It censored comprehensive sex education, equating LGBTQ+ lifestyles with paedophilia, blocked same-sex adoption, and restricted content in media and advertising.
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Orban’s escalation of his culture war against the LGBTQ+ community and what he calls “gender madness,” with its strong echoes of Trumpism, has little to do with concern for children and everything with his need ahead of 2026 elections to counter a surging opposition movement by co-opting support on the far-right. The EU must respond firmly with action in the ECJ. The Pride march on June 28th will go ahead and deserves to be supported from all over Europe.
