2023: the year of the biggest human rights lawsuit in the history of the European Union
By Katalin Cseh
In 2014, a Hungarian gay rights activist, Milán Rózsa climbed into the fortified Russian embassy in Budapest. He held up a rainbow flag, and he called out Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay law and the violence against the Russian LGBTQI+ community, that flared up as a result.
A few months later, Milán took his own life. He was a friend of mine and one of the most passionate and brave people I ever knew. Part of his tragedy was that he could never recover from the psychological wounds that he got while growing up as a gay kid in Hungary.
It is beyond shameful that we are here today, in 2023, with the exact replica of Russia’s anti-gay law in force in an EU country. Just like Putin’s law, it conflates gay people with pedophiles. It incites harassment and violence.
And we already have evidence for that. In October 2021, a few months after the adoption of this shameful law, a man attacked a lesbian couple on the tram in Budapest. A month ago, the media reported what he said to justify his heinous act in court (he received 5 years of prison time). He said, Hungary is not a country where “things like that” are tolerated, and that “Viktor Orbán thinks the same way.” It is clear: the law, as a dog whistle, emboldens bigots to attack innocent people.
Hungary’s homophobic law bans any content, including art and education, that it sees as ‘promoting’ homosexuality to minors. It is absolutely sickening that it’s framed as combatting child abuse, conflating homosexuality with pedophilia. Because of this law, it is now illegal for a student counselor to talk about homosexuality for a high school class, Movies with LGBTQI+ representation are banished to the R-rated category. Moreover: NGOs working on anti-HIV education at school do not have access. The damage it does to LGBTQI+ youth is unfathomable.
But we are not powerless. Our communities are fighting back, and the European Union is firmly by their side. On 15 July 2021, the Commission launched an infringement procedure to strike down this law, referring it to the Court of Justice of the EU. And the European community made it crystal clear that they stand on the side of human rights: fifteen member states signed on to the lawsuit: Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Ireland, Austria, Malta, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Greece, France and Germany. The European Parliament did so as well.
For the LGBTQI+ community and their allies in Hungary, this outpouring of solidarity meant the world. It was unbelievable to see the unstoppable activism, as human rights defenders and their political allies mobilized for change. And this year will be the year we draw a red line in the sand: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
