EU must not tolerate Hungary’s LGBTIQ suppression

Hungary’s continued suppression of the LGBTIQ+ community is condemnable. Earlier this year, the Hungarian parliament approved a constitutional amendment that bans public events by LGBTIQ+ communities.

This legal amendment was used by the police in Budapest to refuse a permit for the organisation of the annual pride march in the country’s capital.

Incredibly, in their justification for the ban, the police said the march could result in “passive victims”. The victims they were referring to are not the members of the LGBTIQ+ community who face daily persecution, discrimination, threats and humiliation at the hands of homophobes and transphobes. No; the ‘victims’ they were referring to are bystanders who may have felt offended, threatened or possibly mortified by the mere presence of queer people in town.

The Budapest Pride organisers called the police decision “a textbook example of tyranny”. And that is exactly what it is—a clear attempt to suppress a minority and deny it its fundamental human rights.

The Hungarian government justifies the ban on public LGBTIQ+ events by depicting it as some sort of ‘protection’ for children. It is a bullshit excuse that uses children as a smokescreen to cover up blatant homophobia. It is an excuse founded on the notion that being gay is some sort of contagious disease that children and society must be protected from. It is an excuse that ignores the fact that there are LGBTIQ children and adolescents in Hungarian families and schools and who will find it harder to come out to their parents and friends.

Irrespective of how the Hungarian government tries to package the laws clamping down on the rights of the LGBTIQ community, the legal amendments run contrary to the fundamental values of human dignity, freedom, equality and respect for human rights enshrined in EU treaties. Hungary should be sanctioned by the EU for going down this dangerous path that seeks to cancel out communities on the basis of who they are and how they were born.

But what is happening in Hungary should also serve as a lesson that rights and freedoms must never be taken for granted.

Over the past 12 years Malta has passed laws that progressively strengthened the rights of LGBTIQ persons. Malta has been leading the Rainbow Index, a rights barometer, produced by ILGA-Europe, an LGBTIQ advocacy group, for a decade now.

Malta, correctly, joined the European Commission in legal proceedings it initiated against Hungary two years ago over a law that prohibited LGBTIQ content, including sex education and media content, from being shown to children in school.

Last month, Malta joined 19 other member states demanding a reversal of the Pride march ban and urging the European Commission to make full use of its rule of law toolbox if Hungary does not revise the contentious law.

It is absurd that certain communities within the EU should be denied their fundamental rights and subjected to harmful restrictions that come with hefty fines or imprisonment, simply because they were born in the wrong country. While the sovereignty of member states should be respected there should be no compromises on the common values enshrined in EU treaties, which every member state signed up to.

We believe Malta should continue to take a leadership role within the EU on this issue, especially at a time when regressive voices everywhere are attempting to claw back the freedoms acquired over the years.

As an aside, Malta must also stop criminalising abortion and instead legislate to allow women the choice to terminate their pregnancy. The same principle of bodily autonomy applied to the LGBTIQ community—the freedom to live the life of their choosing—should also apply in reproductive rights. It makes no sense that women in Malta do not have access to safe and legal abortion, unlike women in other EU countries.