In an open letter sent to the French media TÊTU, "Budapest Pride" demands that Emmanuel Macron would talk about LGBTQI+ issues during his meeting with Viktor Orbán on Monday in Budapest.
Dear fellow LGBTQ advocates !
Emmanuel Macron will be meeting Viktor Orbán on Monday (December 13th, 2021) in Hungary. Viktor Orbán has made the lives of the Hungarian LGBTQ community a nightmare: in the past 2 years he banned legal gender recognition, adoption as an individual if you are gay or lesbian, dismantled the Equal Treatment Authority and censored LGBTQ topics from schools and the media.
We ask you to publicly call out Emmanuel Macron to bring up the oppression of Hungarian LGBTQ persons during their meeting and if he chooses not to do it, ask him not to post celebratory tweets about Pride, IDAHOBIT or the LGBTQ community.
Viktor Orbán is a leading figure in state sponsored anti-LGBTQ hate speech and legislation. His Minister for Family Affairs, Katalin Novák has been cooperating with Russian fundamentalist think tanks, oligarchs, and US-based hate groups for more than 9 years. Viktor Orbán’s fight against Hungarian LGBTQ equality is a direct attack to de-stabilize Western-European democracies, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of thec court and anti-discrimination institutions.
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As a result of Viktor Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ politics, Hungarian LGBTQ persons live in constant fear and uncertainty, not knowing when they will be a target of the next hate-mongering campaign and which of their rights will they be stripped away from.Starting from January, Viktor Orbán is planning on conducting a campaign for the upcoming election AND an anti-LGBTQ referrendum with claims that LGBTQ activists want gender affirmation surgeries to be performed on kindergarteners, want to bring "sexual propaganda" to kindergartens; and a further restriction on media content that coud "influence minors' sexuality".
Viktor Orbán fights an ideological war and LGBTQ persons are suffering from the consequences of his populist agenda.
- In 2015 Viktor Orbán changed Hungary’s Constitution, adding a phrase that “marriage is a union between a man and a woman”, putting a constitutional ban on equal marriage.
- In 2019 Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz, launced an anti-LGBTQ hate-mongering campaign: the Speaker of the Assembly compared adopting same-sex couples to pedophiles, conversion therapies were popularized on national television. In 2019 September Viktor Orbán publicly announced that he will find a way to ban gays and lesbians from adoption as single parents. It only took him a year to fulfill this threat.
- In May 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19 when the whole society was in a crisis, Viktor Orbán completely banned legal gender recognition for transgender and intersex persons, ending a 20-year long legal practise and precedent.
- In October 2020, a fairytale book was published showcasing different minorities. After the leader of a far-right radical party publicly shredded the book, Orbán also came out against this fairytale book saying to “leave our children alone!”
- In 2020 December, during the second wave of COVID-19, Viktor Orbán put a de facto ban on single parent adoption for people who live in same-sex relationships, putting his own twisted ideology in front of children’s best interest. Before this bill, child protection services made a case-by-case decision on who can become an adopting parent. Now the final decision was taken out of the professionals’ hands and was dedicated to Minister for Family Affairs, Katalin Novák, who has been collaborating with Russian and US-based right-wing oligarchs and anti-LGBTQ hate groups since she was appointed by Viktor Orbán in 2014.
- Along with the adoption ban, Viktor Orbán changed the Constitution, to again add some anti-LGBTQ language. These changes seem to have no legal impact but create an even more hostile environment for LGBTQ people in Hungary and pushes for LGBTQ persons to be treated as second class citizens. The added language states that “a father is a man and a mother is a woman”, that “children have a right to be brought up according to Christian values”, and “chldren have a right to be raised according to their biological sex”.
- Also in December 2020, Viktor Orbán dismantled the Equal Treatment Authority, the one and only independent public authority that has been judging discrimination cases and has been consistently making professional and measured decisions.
- In 2021 June Viktor Orbán's party proposed and passed a bill that conflates LGBTQ persons with child abusers, puts a ban on LGBTQ topics to be mentioned at school and media content to be broadcasted that portrays LGBTQ people "in a positive way". In spite of the fact that this law hasn't been enforced, schools and media outlets are already performing self-censorship out of fear.
- Please ask president Macron to mention these issues during his V4 meeting with Viktor Orbán and stand up for equality for all LGBTQ persons.
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Thanking you in advance for standing in solidarity with the Hungarian LGBTQ community and helping us to stand up for our rights during these extremely difficult times. We also appreciate it if you can tag us in your social media posts. Our FB/Instagram/Twitter is @budapestpride.
Yours queerly,
Copyrights : YouTube, Elysee (Macron & Orbán meeting in Paris, october 2019)