ABOVE: Budapest Pride participants. Courtesy photo via Washington Blade.
Thousands of people attended a Pride parade in the Hungarian capital of Budapest July 25 that took place against the backdrop of the government’s ongoing efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony, who is challenging Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in next year’s presidential election, is among those who participated in the Budapest Pride parade. Event organizers said upwards of 30,000 people took part.
“There were a lot of supporters and allies, lots of young people and some older people,” one Budapest Pride participant told the Washington Blade.
The participant said someone shouted an anti-gay slur at them and their friends as they walked home while holding a rainbow flag. They said the parade was nevertheless peaceful.
“The mood was more like a protest, solidarity and marching for equal rights than a party,” they told the Blade. “I didn’t see drag queens and it felt a bit muted, but I’m happy we had such a peaceful and fun Pride.”
Budapest Pride took place less than a week after Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced he wants to hold a referendum on a new law that bans the promotion of homosexuality and sex-reassignment surgery to minors in the country.
The law took effect on July 8. The European Commission a week later announced it would take legal action against Hungary.
Hungarian lawmakers late last year amended the country’s constitution to define family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation” with “the mother is a woman, the father a man” and effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children. The Hungarian Parliament in April 2020 approved a bill that bans transgender and intersex people from legally changing their gender.
