Hungary\u2019s new government has taken an important step toward dismantling a key discriminatory legacy of the Orb\u00e1n era\u2014the legal targeting of LGBT people. The job is not finished, however.
The government\u00a0submitted legislation to Parliament on September 14 to remove several provisions of the 2021\u00a0so-called \u201cchild protection\u201d law that restrict the \u201cportrayal\u201d or \u201cpromotion\u201d of sexual and gender diversity in content accessible to children. The proposed changes remove the restrictions from laws relating to child protection, media, advertising, and education.
The reforms follow an April\u00a0judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union finding that Hungary\u2019s legal restrictions stigmatized and marginalized LGBT people and violated EU law. The court found that Hungary could not invoke the best interests of the child to justify restrictions that discriminated against LGBT people and violated fundamental rights.
The government deserves credit for moving to comply with that judgment and abandoning the\u00a0false and deeply damaging equation of LGBT people with threats to children that\u00a0underpinned the 2021 law. The proposed legislation instead focuses child-protection restrictions on substantively harmful material, including pornography, sexual exploitation, grooming, and age-inappropriate sexual content.
However the government\u2019s plans leave other discriminatory provisions in Hungarian law intact. The bill removes restrictions on the \u201cportrayal\u201d or \u201cpromotion\u201d of homosexuality and gender diversity from several laws, but leaves unchanged section 5/A of the Family Protection Act, which contains similar restrictions on content accessible to children. Nor does bill address discriminatory language in the\u00a0Fundamental Law (Hungary\u2019s constitution) or restrictions in the Freedom of Assembly Act that have been used to prohibit Pride and other LGBT-related assemblies.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), H\u00e1tt\u00e9r Society, and Amnesty International Hungary jointly\u00a0welcomed the proposed changes and called for further amendments to fully dismantle the discriminatory legal framework. This goal goes beyond cleaning up Hungary\u2019s statute book but includes reform of Article XVI of the Fundamental Law that provides a constitutional basis for anti-LGBT restrictions and the legislation used\u00a0to restrict Pride marches.
The Tisza government has a parliamentary supermajority and while dismantling much of the Orb\u00e1n-era anti-LGBT legal machinery is worth applauding, the government needs to finish what it started. It should amend the remaining discriminatory provisions, including the Fundamental Law, and remove any legal basis for restrictions targeting LGBT people and their rights.
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