Lawmakers target LGBTQ issues in school, this time in Hungary

When it came time to send their twin boys to school, Szilárd Szabó and his husband opted for a private American educational institution rather than a public Hungarian one.

The choice was as much about giving their sons a strong, cosmopolitan education as it was about their family’s “two dad” dynamics.

“We wanted to have an environment where people are more open, where teachers are more open, and being gay is not a big issue,” shares Mr. Szabó, sipping espresso in a modern sunlit office near the Danube River. “We chose the bubble, the friendly and positive environment.”

Such an environment is becoming harder to find these days. Since 2020, the Hungarian Constitution stipulates that the “foundation of the family” is heterosexual marriage and bans the adoption of children by same-sex couples. And the government has been waging a relentless campaign against what it calls “LGBT” ideology in the run-up to parliamentary elections this weekend.

The April 3 vote coincides with a referendum nominally around school education on LGBTQ issues. Critics see the plebiscite as an effort to lock in bigoted legislation.

At the heart of the controversy is Hungary’s Child Protection Act. Passed in June 2021, the legislation stiffened penalties for pedophilia but also sneaked in last-minute amendments banning the promotion or portrayal of LGBTQ themes in education and media to minors.

The spirit of the law alarmed not only Hungary’s LGBTQ community but also the European Commission, which has launched legal challenges against both Hungary and Poland (which sparked controversy earlier with its “LGBT-free zones”). The two nations are at the center of a culture war pitting the more socially liberal West against an increasingly conservative East.

“It’s all part of a larger anti-gender and LGBT politics,” says Dorottya Redai. The author of the children’s book “Fairyland is for Everyone” previously ran a “getting to know LGBTQ people” program in schools.

“Christian fundamentalist groups are involved in it in the U.S.,” she says. “Russia is involved in it. Countries in Central Europe are involved in it. It is strongest in Hungary and Poland. But there is a broad picture that is important to see.

“In Poland and Hungary, it is not far-right groups on the fringe. It is the government,” she says. “That is why it has such a severe impact, because it becomes policy and legislation.”

“It is forbidden to answer”

Hungary’s right-wing government argues that sex education, including discussions on sexual orientation, is a parental responsibility. Those views paved the way for the problematic law, which activists say conflates pedophilia with membership in the LGBTQ community. Echoing the conservative rhetoric around Florida’s own Parental Rights in Education law, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, TV ads in Hungary suggest that young children are being taught about sex reassignment surgery over math at school.

“The Hungarian government proposes that citizens should have a chance to express their stance on the issues of gender propaganda,” Deputy Minister Balázs Orbán told parliament in November. ”We believe that we ... have to say no to LGBT propaganda in schools carried out with the help of NGOs and media, without parental consent.”

The law is so vaguely worded that the safest bet for teachers is silence, even if a student is clearly struggling. “If a a child asks a teacher about anything related to homosexuality or his or her gender issues, it is forbidden to answer,” says Anna Komjáthy, president of the Democratic Union of Teachers. “This is the big problem. Teachers have to decide whether they listen to their conscience and answer and help ... but they risk that a parent will report them.”

“It is very dangerous because children are left alone to confront their problems,” she adds. “There are only a few schools that have psychologists who can help them navigate such issues.”

High school head teacher Orsolya Eröss says more open and frank discussions are needed in the classroom. Even though the law has fueled an oppressive atmosphere, Ms. Eröss says she does not hold her back from delivering straightforward advice on matters of the heart to her teenage students.

“Who you love is your private affair and it is your right to love whomever you want,” says Ms. Eröss, who teaches French and Portuguese in Budapest. “Life for [LGBTQ] people is difficult enough already. It is not good to make their lives even harder, to exclude them or make them feel that this is not a normal state.”

A political strategy

Activists find the echoes with Russia’s 2013 “gay propaganda” law chilling. Luca Dudits of the Háttér Society, an LGBTQ rights organization, says the law is one of many steps taken by the government to dismantle progress won over decades. (Homosexuality was decriminalized in Hungary in 1961, a few years before Germany and the United Kingdom.) And it has emboldened people to carry out vigilante verbal and physical attacks, including one against a small girl and her grandfather because she wore a rainbow backpack.

“Since Fidesz came to power in 2010, they have been systematically eroding the rights and freedoms of LGBTQI people,” she says of the right-wing populist party led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In 2012, Hungary came ninth in advocacy group ILGA Europe’s ranking of the LGBTQ human rights situation across Europe. Now it has fallen to 28th among 49 European nations. “They have been quite outspoken about their distaste for LGBT people,” she says.

Mr. Orbán takes inspiration from hard-liners abroad, she says, but ultimately he cherry-picks issues he thinks will resonate with the Hungarian public and not trigger too much pushback.

“He didn’t just try to take, for example, the Polish model,” she says. “There is no police brutality against LGBTQI people because he knows that that is something that Hungarian people are really sensitive about. [And] he did not try to import the religious angle, because he knows that Hungarian people are not as religious as they are in Poland.”

The referendum would not cause any legal changes itself. But should it pass, Ms. Dudits worries Fidesz lawmakers will further tighten the screws on the LGBTQ community. A clear victory would allow the government to argue to the European Commission that its laws enjoy public support. And, because referendums are legally binding for three years, it would stop the opposition from changing course should they win the elections.

“Enemies that don’t exist”

Many argue the negative focus on the LGBTQ community is pure political strategy – like the rhetoric about migrants in past elections – rather than a sincere effort to protect Christian family values. Literary historian Krisztián Nyáry notes that even works in the government’s mandatory reading list, such as the poems of Sappho and passages of “The Iliad,” would require a basic conversation about homosexuality to be taught correctly. He made an anthology, “Not Compulsory – Forbidden Literature,” to illustrate the point.

“The referendum is a campaign tool, but at the same time it is discriminatory against 5 to 6% of Hungary society for no good reason,” says Mr. Nyáry, who is also the director of a major book publishing house in Budapest. “For the last 12 years, the government has been looking for enemies that don’t exist. When they don’t exist it is easier to fight against them. They create a topic so you don’t talk about anything else.”

Back in the 1990s, he recalls, the autobiographical novel of Hungarian Jewish writer György Faludy, “My Happy Days in Hell,” which addresses homosexual love, was a bestseller.

The mood has changed. In 2020, a far-right politician made a show of shredding Ms. Redai’s “Fairyland is for Everyone” because it depicted a lesbian Cinderella and a transgender dragon slayer – ironically boosting sales. And last year Mr. Nyáry’s bookshop chain was fined for selling a storybook featuring gay and lesbian parents, though a court revoked the fine this month.

“If you say to a parent, ‘You have to protect your children because they are in danger,’ [then] all parents will say ‘I have to protect my child,’” says Ms. Redai. “It is a smart way to attract voters.”