In July 2020 a Hungarian court found the country’s former ambassador to Peru, Gábor Kaleta, guilty of possession of some 19,000 child porn pictures. He received a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine. Some details of the case were classified for ten years. Then in November 2020, József Szajer – a Fidesz MEP and party co-founder – was caught trying to flee a gay sex party in Brussels that broke COVID regulations. “We will not forget his 30 years of work, but his actions were not acceptable and cannot be defended,” Orbán said, as Szajer was ejected from the political party he helped found. The following month, Fidesz modified Hungary’s ‘Christian Constitution’, which Szajer had authored and which prohibited gay marriage, to also outlaw adoption by gay couples. The child protection law was then introduced to Parliament in February, and the LGBT-related amendments added in mid-June.
This is all a long way from the 1994 election campaign, when Orbán and Hungary’s other party leaders answered questions from Mások (‘Others’), the country’s first LGBT magazine. Asked whether he supported gay marriage, the leader of Hungary’s liberal Free Democrats, Gábor Kuncze, flippantly replied “not with me.” Orbán, at that time Hungary’s other liberal party leader, meanwhile gave a more considered answer, which ended in the affirmative.
“The level of homophobia, even among the (current) opposition parties was very different in the 2000s, even if they did not openly voice it,” said András Lederer, an LGBTQ+ activist and the former leader of the Free Democrats’ youth wing. “In that sense, Fidesz was a different party 15 years ago. I think they would be quite ashamed of the political statements that many of their lawmakers are making today, and also of this bill itself.” Thanks to the efforts of Lederer and others, registered partnership for same-sex couples was legalised, in 2009, the year before Orbán regained power.
Shifting opinion
Yet as Orbán built his self-proclaimed ‘illiberal democracy’ and the Free Democrats imploded, Hungary’s attitudes to LGBTQ+ issues have shifted in the opposite direction.
“I think the trajectory is still very, very positive,” Lederer said. “One of the main hopes I have in this whole debate is that Fidesz came too late to the party. Years ago, this probably would have seen much weaker resistance from society, but it is no longer 15% of the population that is tolerant towards LGBTQ+ issues – there is actually a majority.
“Fidesz is struggling to connect the LGBTQ+ community with paedophilia, to attempt to tie this to something with which the vast majority absolutely agrees, because in itself it would have been absolutely impossible,” he said.
The ‘child protection’ referendum, to be held in January or February, will ask voters five questions including “Do you support the popularization of sexual gender transformation surgeries for minor age children?” and “Do you support presenting media content showing gender transformation to minor age children?”
Yet by calling this referendum Orbán has also opened up the legal possibility for the six-party opposition alliance to launch its own version.
Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony, a leading hopeful for the opposition alliance’s primary run-off in the autumn, said he would like to see his questions “aimed at saving Hungary from Fidesz” added to the ballot, so that ordinary people can give their opinion with a “five no and five yes” vote.
If authorised, the opposition referendum will ask voters about the planned Chinese Fudan University in Budapest; Fidesz’s recent tender that outsources motorway governance for 35 years; Hungary’s failure to join the European Prosecutor’s Office; free COVID antibody tests for pensioners; and improving conditions for job seekers.
“Orbán clearly needs such a proposal because the opposition has their own big issue for the autumn and that is the primary – the referendum is to avoid autumn being about how the opposition is preparing for the elections against him,” Biró Nagy said.
“If the electoral campaign is about the mismanagement of the COVID crisis, Fudan University, the Eastern opening and the Pegasus surveillance scandal, Orban is in a very delicate position,” said Biró Nagy. “If the political agenda is about identity politics and LGBTQ+ rights, then this is Orbán playing at home.”