Summary
Hungary passed a new anti-LGBTQ+ law banning Pride events and allowing facial recognition to identify attendees, sparking large protests in Budapest.
Protesters blockaded the Margaret Bridge over the Danube, blocking traffic and ignoring police orders to leave. The law, passed 136-27, amends Hungary’s “child protection” legislation, which already restricts LGBTQ+ content.
Critics call it an attempt to scapegoat LGBTQ+ people and distract from economic issues.
Despite repression, support for Budapest Pride is growing, with many vowing to attend in defiance of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s crackdown.
I’m so sorry, Hungarians. I really hope you’ll be able to revert this atrocity somehow. 💔
These protests were basically spontaneous, since the government wanted to pass the law quickly leaving very little time before announcement and it being passed. In fact, it is technically unconstitutional, since they didn’t even wait to amend their own constitution to allow it before passing it. They will amend it though.
The point is, these people mostly heard at work that this happened and there will be a protest, and took to the streets the same afternoon, no preparation, no notice. Huge turnout for something that was barely organized.
The other special thing is that this crowd, and crowds nowadays are “bipartisan” by Hungarian standards, it is both liberals and nationalists out here. Memes saying “I’ve never been to Pride, this will be my first one” are going viral. When confronted by the police, the crowd sang the national anthem, the folk song “Spring winds bring the flooding water” and the nationalist revolutionary song Kossuth-nóta with the refraine being “Long live Hungarian freedom! Long live the homeland!” at them.
Here’s another picture from the protest, the signs say “I am trans, but still have a bigger dick than Orbán”, and - loosely translated because of idioms - “This would be a better country if you would go jack each other off instead of riling people up”.
they didn’t even wait to amend their own constitution to allow it before passing it. They will amend it though
We’re chugging along with one amendment a month in the past 15 years to what is described as a “granite solid” “basic law”. We kinda don’t have a constitution since 2010 because IDK why.
Might be worth noting that Trump absolutely adores Viktor Orban and routinely has nothing but great things to say about him.
I will be the bearer of bad news and tell you this will do didly dick, the issue with both Hungary and Slovakia for that matter is that the leftist and progressive voters are highly concentrated in the capital, but in both countries they just get massively outvoted by the rest of the country.
Unfortunately those are the areas that dislike people from the capital and the people who watch the state media for whom this will be spun into “woke people destroy property to support pedophiles” type stuff.
While I am from Slovakia I am Hungarian and do have relatives that watch the M1 and other state controlled TV channels, the brain rot is fucking real.
Still the protests/riots have to happen otherwise things will just continue to get worse
“Why do we still need pride parades?” this is why
Pride wasn’t a parade. Pride was a riot. The parades are the compromise to stop lighting things on fire until people were treated as people.
Guess some lighting things on fire is overdue.
I’ve heard bad things about Orban but I didn’t realize things had gone downhill this fast. Figures that the pro-Russia goons are also anti-LGBT. What’s next? Have they already begun the Christofascism?
The whole thing bears more explanation.
Orbán look set to lose the election in 2026, and it trying to use this to divide the opposition party that is currently very successful in trying to challenge him. If everyone talks about Pride instead of the collapse of healthcare and education (people are waiting months to get on waitlists that are year-long for everything, thousands of GPs are missing), then he thinks maybe he can scare enough people with the threat of war like last time to stay in power.
It may backfire though, because it looks like it brought out some serious organic support for Pride, and it may turn into a big protest against the government without impacting the opposition since they won’t be leading it.
That said, things are going downhill very fast, there are new lows the government hits every week. They falsified EU parliament documents to aid their propaganda a few weeks ago, last week Orbán has been calling the opposition “bugs that managed to survive the winter” that “survived too much” and “have to be cleaned come spring”.
The last time someone in power used that language, it was the “nemzetvezető” (our word for führer) Ferenc Szálasi, describing Jewish people. Orbán actually had to backtrack, because even his base has the decency to question that.
Also, the Hungarian christian churches, both the Catholics and the Protestants are in bed with Orbán, but it’s not like the US, nobody wants a theocracy, it’s just a vote grab and general corruption. In fact, that alignment is costing them votes now, since there seems to be a pedophilic abhorrence getting outed every month since last year when they had to get rid of the President and the Minister of Justice for one.
