The vote passed 140 to 21, pushed through by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling coalition, Fidesz-KDNP. Ahead of the vote, opposition members and activists tried to block the parking garage entrance to parliament, reports the Associated Press. They were physically removed by police after zip-tying themselves together in protest.
The amendment says children’s right to “moral, physical and spiritual development” takes priority over all other rights except the right to life — including the right to peaceful assembly. It codifies an earlier law passed in March that bans LGBTQ+ public events, including the annual Budapest Pride.
“This whole endeavor which we see launched by the government, it has nothing to do with children’s rights,” said Dánel Döbrentey, a lawyer with the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. He called it “pure propaganda.”
The law also gives police the authority to use facial recognition to track people attending such events. Fines can reach up to 200,000 Hungarian forints — about $546 USD.
“One of the most fundamental problems is its invasiveness, just the sheer scale of the intrusion that happens when you apply mass surveillance to a crowd,” said Ádám Remport, another lawyer with the HCLU. “More salient in this case is the effect on the freedom of assembly, specifically the chilling effect that arises when people are scared to go out and show their political or ideological beliefs for fear of being persecuted.”
During the vote, opposition lawmakers tried to disrupt the session using air horns, but the vote continued.
The amendment also clarifies that the Hungarian constitution only recognizes two sexes: male and female. It builds on an earlier amendment that said “a mother is a woman and a father is a man” and blocked same-sex adoption.
In response, government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács said the change is “not an attack on individual self-expression, but a clarification that legal norms are based on biological reality.”
It’s the 15th time Orbán’s government has amended the constitution since rewriting it in 2011.
Another part of the new law allows Hungary to suspend the citizenship of dual nationals who also hold passports from countries outside the European Economic Area. If the government decides someone is a threat to public safety or national security, their Hungarian citizenship could be suspended for up to 10 years.
In recent months, Orbán has ramped up his warnings about “foreign influence” and outside funding in Hungarian politics. He has made multiple moves to go after civil society groups and media organizations critical of his government.
In March, Orbán gave a speech in which he called his critics a “shadow army” funded from abroad. He said, “We will eliminate the entire shadow army,” referring to “politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists.” Under previous US President Joe Biden, USAID Administrator Samantha Power traveled to Budapest to promote LGBTQ lifestyles and discuss the administration's aspirations and perspectives on developments in Hungary. The main focus for the US was helping the "LGBTQI+" community and other "marginalized groups" in Hungary and was backed by USAID.
