BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s ruling coalition continued its crackdown on the country’s LBGTQ+ community on Monday, as members submitted a invoice to parliament that may ban the favored Budapest Satisfaction occasion and permit authorities to make use of facial recognition software program to determine attendees.
The invoice is nearly sure to move, because the ruling coalition has a two-thirds majority in parliament.
The invoice would make it an offense to carry or attend occasions that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors below 18.
Attending a prohibited occasion would carry fines as much as 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546), which the state would ahead to “little one safety.”
The proposal is the most recent step in opposition to LGBTQ+ folks taken by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose authorities has handed laws that rights teams and different European politicians have decried as repressive in opposition to sexual minorities.
The federal government portrays itself as a champion of conventional household values and a defender of Christian civilization from what it calls “gender insanity,” and argues its insurance policies are designed to guard kids from “sexual propaganda.”
Hungary’s “little one safety” legislation was handed in 2021. Other than banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content material accessible to minors — together with in tv, movies, commercials and literature — it additionally prohibits the point out of LGBTQ+ points in class education schemes, and forbids the general public depiction of “gender deviating from intercourse at beginning.”
In a speech in February, Orbán hinted that his authorities would take steps to ban the Budapest Satisfaction occasion, which attracts hundreds and celebrates the historical past of the LGBTQ+ motion whereas asserting the equal rights of the homosexual, lesbian, bisexual and transgender neighborhood.
Budapest Satisfaction is marking its thirtieth anniversary.
Organizers have known as Orbán’s drive to ban the occasion a restriction of elementary freedoms of speech and meeting.
