ABOVE: Budapest flies the Pride flag for the first time in Aug. 2020. Photo via Twitter/Hatter Society.
Lawmakers in Hungary on Tuesday approved proposals that would effectively ban same-sex couples from adopting children and define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Reuters reports the Hungarian Constitution will now define family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation. The mother is a woman, the father a man.”
Hungarian law previously allowed same-sex couples to adopt children if one partner applied as a single person.
Reuters cited Justice Minister Judit Varga who said the “main rule is that only married couples can adopt a child, that is, a man and a woman who are married.”
“(The) Hungarian Parliament passed the amendments that stigmatize same-sex couples raising children and transgender people, make LGBTQI school education programs impossible and complicate single-parent adoption,” tweeted the Háttér Society, a Hungarian LGBTQ advocacy group, after the vote.
Hungarian Parliament passed the amendments that stigmatize same-sex couples raising children and transgender people, make LGBTQI school education programs impossible and complicate single-parent adoption.
— Háttér Society (@hattertarsasag) December 15, 2020
Tuesday’s vote is the latest in a series of attacks against LGBTQ Hungarians that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party have carried out in recent years.
The Hungarian Parliament earlier this year approved a bill that prevents transgender and intersex people from legally changing their gender. Jozsef Szajer, a promiment Fidesz member who helped write Hungary’s 2011 Constitution that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, resigned from the European Parliament late last month after he attended a gay sex party in Brussels.
“These bills further restrict the rights of LGBTI children and parents in Hungary,” said ILGA-Europe Advocacy Director Katrin Hugendubel in a press release that ILGA-Europe, Transgender Europe and Amnesty International issued on Tuesday. “LGBTI children will be forced to grow up in an environment which restricts them from being able to express their identities, and children across Hungary will be refused safe and loving families, as adoption is restricted only to married heterosexual couples.”
“This attempt to rush through these discriminatory, homophobic and transphobic new laws are part of an ongoing attack on LGBTI people by Hungarian authorities,” added Hugendubel.
Transgender Europe Executive Director Masen Davis echoed this sentiment, while adding that European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen should formally respond to Hungary’s LGBTQ rights crackdown.
“Earlier this year, Hungary made it impossible for trans people to change their names and legal gender marker,” said Davis. “We are deeply concerned for the health and safety of trans children and adults in Hungary in such a hostile climate.”
