Hungary passes legislation allowing the government to ban LGBTQ+ public events

The Hungarian parliament has passed a constitutional amendment that allows the government to prohibit LGBTQ+ communities from organising public events.

The amendment, which required a two-thirds vote, was passed on Monday, with 140 lawmakers voting in support and only 21 lawmakers voting against it.

The members of the parliament voted along party lines.

This amendment was proposed by the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The coalition argued that children’s rights to moral, physical and spiritual development exceed any other right except the right to life.

The country’s child protection law, which is considered controversial, asserts that children’s rights to moral, physical, and spiritual development take precedence over all other rights, except for the right to life.

The amendments ban the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors under 18.

The law also grants authorities the ability to use facial recognition technology to identify individuals attending prohibited events, such as Budapest Pride, with fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints, $546, for those involved.

The recent amendment further clarified that the constitution recognises only two sexes, male and female, expanding on an earlier change that prohibited same-sex adoption by defining a mother as a woman and a father as a man.

The amendment, passed on Monday, also permits the suspension of dual citizenship for Hungarians holding citizenship in non-European Economic Area countries for up to 10 years, if they are deemed a threat to public order, public security, or national security.

Ahead of the vote, opposition politicians and other protesters had attempted to disrupt the process by blocking the entrance to a parliament parking garage.

However, security officials physically removed the demonstrators from the parliament.

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A lawmaker with the opposition Momentum party who participated in the attempted blockade, Dávid Bedő, had described the amendment as an attempt by the ruling party to dismantle democracy and the rule of law.

“In the past two or three months, we see that this process has been sped up,” AP quoted him as saying.

Also, Hungarian critics had condemned the amendment, describing it as another step toward authoritarianism by the populist government.