The Hungarian Parliament has passed an amendment to the Constitution that allows the government to ban public events in LGBTQ+ communities.
The amendment requires two-thirds of the vote, and passed 140 votes on Monday, 21 votes against it. It was proposed by the ruled Fidesz-KDNP coalition led by the populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Before the vote, the amendment, opposition politicians and other protesters tried to block the entrance to the parliamentary parking lot. Police actually evacuated the protesters, who used a zipper tie to tie themselves together.
The amendment claims that children’s rights to moral, physical and mental development replace the right to life, including the right to peaceful gathering. Hungary’s controversial “child protection” legislation prohibits homosexuality “description or promotion” for minors under the age of 18.
The amendment passed a law in Parliament in March that parliament quickly tracked bans public events held by LGBTQ+ communities, including popular pride events in Budapest attracting thousands of people each year.
The law also allows authorities to use facial recognition tools to identify people participating in ban activities like Budapest Pride and can fine up to 200,000 Hungarians ($546).
Dávid Bed, a MP for the Opposition Momentum Party, participated in an attempted lockdown, and said before the vote that Orbán and Fidesz “have been eliminating democracy and the rule of law, and over the past two or three months, we have seen the process accelerated.”
In recent years, the Hungarian government has campaigned for the LGBTQ+ community and argued that its “Child Protection” policy prohibits the availability of any material that refers to homosexuality to minors in order to protect children from so-called “wake ideology” and “gender madness.”
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