Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz government are seen as outliers in the European Union because of their gender-phobic and homophobic ideology. The European Commission even took Budapest to court in 2022 over an anti-LGBTQ+ law known as the “Child Protection” act.

The controversial law, which passed on 15 June 2021 under the guise of protecting children, implicitly conflates LGBTQ+ individuals with child abusers. It also simultaneously contains a US-style registry of paedophilic sex offenders and a Russian-style ban on exposing minors to so-called LGBTQ+ propaganda in the context of sexual education and general representation in education, media, and advertisement.

The law was widely criticised domestically and abroad for undermining equality, fundamental rights, freedom of expression, and the right to information. What is more, by blurring the lines between sexual minorities and child molesters, the bill suggests that both categories deserve similar social judgement. The new law has been subjected to further criticism for not clearly defining the focal theme of “LGBTQ+ propaganda”, leaving it open to subjective interpretation and enabling confusion and potential misuse.

Since the act was ratified, Hungary has made international headlines for its LGBTQ+ censorship. While these reports often paint a picture of consistent ideological persecution of sexual minorities, the reality is that the government’s approach to censorship is far less consistent and much more complex.

What’s in the act?

The law prohibits making content available for children under the age of 18 that “promotes or displays sexuality for its own purposes, or that promotes or displays gender/sex change or homosexuality.” Further guidelines published by the main regulator – the Media Authority – stipulate that children should not be exposed to topics of gender reassignment and homosexuality if these subjects are emphasised as central, essential, or indispensable parts of the content. The recommendation also states that the presentation of such themes as social norms and appealing lifestyles constitutes propaganda, which is allegedly aimed at spreading LGBTQ+ “ideologies” and influencing minors.

Despite including provisions regarding the representation of homosexuality and transgenderism in the law, the document from the Media Authority also addresses general gestures of affection in a subsequent paragraph. Without specifying the genders or sexes involved, it states that expressions of affection such as kissing, hugging, or holding hands should not be deemed problematic as long as these gestures are not portrayed for their own sake, are not the focal point, or are not prominently featured.

While the Media Authority provides a short list of productions to be restricted, such as the American drama series The L World and Queer as Folk, or Pedro Almodóvar’s comedy-drama film All About My Mother, these explanations do not clarify what constitutes “propaganda” and what determines whether queer elements are central to a work of art. In the absence of precise definitions, accurate guidance can only be drawn from previous decisions of the Media Authority and the courts.

Inconsistent enforcement

In principle, the Media Authority does not directly supervise or control Hungarian publicity. However, it has been involved in cases that have either drawn public attention or have been pursued after reports from the Consumer Protection Authorities. Yet, the Child Protection bill is by no means uniformly enforced.

For instance, the Media Authority’s website has an easy-to-fill-out anonymous reporting form. In the six months between June 2021 and the end of the year, 84 notifications were received from citizens referring to the Child Protection act, but in the first eight months of the following year, only 12 notifications were sent.

As the regulator told journalists, none of the 96 complaints delivered by citizens was followed up with. This may explain why there was a sharp drop in the number of notifications.

The law’s effectiveness is further hampered by domestic and international legal environments. The provisions of the Media Act only apply to media service providers residing in Hungary, excluding foreign media services available in the country. Regardless, in 2022, the Media Authority objected to streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+. The streamers disregarded these complaints, but the Media Authority argued that these companies are “responsible” to comply with Hungarian law even though they are not obliged to do so. 

The same thing applies to social media platforms and websites hosted on non-Hungarian servers, where it is arguably more likely for children to encounter harmful content. The government and the pro-government media simply ignore this glaring contradiction. Moreover, they fail to advocate for improving children’s media literacy or creating programmes to help teachers and parents to protect children. Instead, the Media Authority targets Hungary-based curated institutions with well-defined profiles and audiences – domestic analogue media, museums, and bookshops – only to fail before the national courts.

Examples of these contradictions abound.  While Netflix, based in the Netherlands, is freely streaming the gay coming-of-age series Heartstopper, in July 2023, the Líra book distributor in Hungary was fined 30,000 euros for displaying the original Heartstopper novel in the youth literature section. The bookstore challenged the decision in court and, in February 2024, won due to a punctuation error in the law. (Although the problem was discovered last October, the government failed to replace the missing comma until recently.)

There are also other inconsistencies in the way bookshops are targeted. Líra has been fined an additional 12,500 euros for displaying the volume Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls as youth literature since the story of a transgender girl is featured among the 100 female biographies told in the volume. However, the court dismissed the case alongside the Heartstopper fine. Another bookshop was fined only 2,500 euros for the same book on February 13, 2024.

There was no argument in court about how the authorities planned to collect the fine in light of the recently lost case, nor was there an explanation for why there was such a significant difference in the amount of the fine imposed for selling the same book. Unsurprisingly, the second bookstore has also promised to take their case to court.

In the face of these developments, bookstores have repeatedly indicated that it should not be their responsibility to decide which book is punishable under the text of the ambiguous law. The vagueness of the Child Protection bill and the regulatory attention of the Media Authority risks seriously affecting bookshops’ business, which could essentially cease the distribution of some titles.

Larger businesses have their own coping mechanisms when it comes to navigating the uncertain realities of the Hungarian market. In response to a question from Amnesty International Hungary, large multinational corporations replied that their international LGBTQ+-related or Pride Month advertisement campaigns are simply not worth presenting in Hungary any longer, since they see no reason to risk penalties that can climb up to 1.2 million euros. On the other hand, the television network RTL reported regular pre-emptive consultations with the Media Authority to avoid punishment.

A public mess

The anti-LGBTQ+ law has created controversy in both national and municipal institutions. In 2023, the extreme right-wing Mi Hazánk (“Our Homeland”) party’s leader raised attention to a World Press Photo exhibition displayed in the Hungarian National Gallery that included images of elderly gay men living in a retirement home. He claimed that the national institution is breaking the child-protection law by promoting homosexuality in an exhibition without an age restriction. In reaction to these claims, the minister of culture ordered the Fidesz-appointed director of the gallery to only let legal adults visit the exhibition.

As museums have no authority to ask for visitors’ IDs, László L. Simon rejected the request. This prompted the minister of culture to fire him on the grounds of “a lack of leadership skills”. There were no further explanations about how the images in question would threaten the development of minors. Perhaps even more importantly, authorities did not address the fact that the Child Protection law has no relevant section about museum exhibitions.

L. Simon himself had voted for the Child Protection act as a member of the Hungarian parliament for Fidesz in 2021. He continued to champion the law after being fired, criticising only its loose application. The World Press Photo exhibition at the National Gallery saw record attendance after the controversy.

Parallel to the National Museum’s scandal, the Museum of Ethnography closed a section of its running exhibition featuring photographs of homosexual men to avoid possible consequences. The museum management was not held responsible in this case. However, a United Student Front activist group member who demonstrated for students’ rights and freedom in the arts, information and education received a 200-euro fine for visiting the part of the museum that was cordoned off. The student took the case to court, and a final decision is now pending.

The burden of vagueness

While this preventive practice of self-censorship can feel absurd when it is done by an institution that wishes to avoid punishment, it can amount to downright mental and psychological torture for the individual.

This was the case for Gideon Horváth, a renowned sculptor whose work is often grounded in theoretical frameworks of queer ecology or queer history. Since 2021, the artist has repeatedly faced warnings from art institutions’ authorities. In 2022, the director of an autonomous Budapest municipal museum attempted to censor Horváth’s explanatory texts from a group show.

The following year, within the framework of the Veszprém-Balaton European Capital of Culture, Horváth was invited to a residency programme. His work plan on queer ecology was accepted initially, but he later encountered pressure to remove some words to comply with the “political climate.” He refused and, after a prolonged debate, managed to have his works’ descriptions published without change.

A similar incident occurred in September 2023, in the programme of the Budapest City Gallery’s public art biennale, which initially had the support of the anti-Orbán political leadership of the Hungarian capital. Citing the Child Protection law, the vice-director of the autonomous municipal Deák17 Gallery – which was hosting a subsection of the biennale – attempted to prevent the descriptions of Horváth’s work from appearing in the exhibition.

After extensive discussion, Horváth managed to display his texts, albeit with LGBTQ+-related words blacked out. In this way, he showcased the impact of censorship in a performative manner. A similar text appeared uncensored in public space in another section of the same festival.

Subsequently, Horváth was nominated for a prestigious prize by the independent Esterházy Foundation. Dr. Júlia Fabényi, the Fidesz-appointed director of the state-funded Ludwig Museum in Budapest, is a member of the Board of Trustees that grants the prize. In defiance of Horváth’s arguments, the director decided to censor his accompanying text when the shortlisted artists’ works were exhibited in the Ludwig Museum.

In the end, Horváth won the prize, but the event hosts did not ask the winners their traditional questions. This was an apparent attempt to prevent the artist from speaking. (Since then, however, the museum has purchased some works from Horváth.)

Afterwards, Horváth reported on social media that, apart from enduring repeated censorship, he was tormented by his otherwise anti-establishment critics. They accused him of legitimising government-enforced institutional censorship by taking part in the exhibition rather than sanctioning it in protest. These censures implied that Horváth’s moral responsibility was to give up an important opportunity for his career, including the nomination, the prestigious exhibition opportunity and the chance to win the prize.

The truth, however, is that Horváth risked his future career opportunities each time he publicly revealed the details of his experience with censorship. He never received public support from leading autonomous institutions or professionals in the Hungarian cultural and political field.

The laws are a political tool designed to serve the interests of Orbán’s government by sowing division in society and distracting the public from Fidesz’s failures.

Perhaps it is this last example that best illustrates the burden placed by the extreme vagueness of the illogical law and its inconsistent application on individual creators, NGOs, publishers and other businesses. Every time they consider publishing or displaying something that can be linked even marginally to the portrayal of sexual minorities, they face extreme uncertainty.

And yet, despite the government’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in Hungary has not decreased in recent years. In fact, the results of an IPSOS 2023 international survey show the exact opposite: support for same-sex marriage in Hungary has risen from 30 to 47 per cent in the past 10 years. In the same period, support for adoption by same-sex couples rose from 42 to 59 per cent. Has the entire anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda failed?

An instrument of division and distraction

When the Child Protection law was passed in 2021, it sparked widespread speculation about whether the government had any intention to enforce it or whether it was just a calculated component of Fidesz’s communication strategy aimed at dividing the public.

Even if we accept the government’s explanation that the law is meant to protect children, its inconsistent enforcement exposes Fidesz’s blatant hypocrisy. The act cannot be interpreted in terms of ideological rigour, but only as political opportunism. While Hungarian activists, creators, and distributors are busy interpreting the law, the government revels in the opportunities created by a persistently unclear situation.

As expected, the Fidesz government is simply exploiting the law and the reactionary critical voices to legitimise its symbolic fight against the alleged attempts of the European Union to subjugate Hungarian sovereignty and destroy national cultural identity. 

For the government, creating an uncertain situation is enough to drive a wedge into the fabric of society based on gender-phobic ideology, and to demonise and further alienate LGBTQ+ organisations and their political and social allies from the social mainstream. Furthermore, the law allows Fidesz to suppress opposition parties and the liberal intelligentsia who support  LGBTQI+ causes.

The persistent focus and agenda-setting around this issue serve to frame those who support the rights of sexual minorities as anti-national actors aiming to destroy Hungarian sovereignty, thus committing a form of quasi-treason. For this strategy to succeed, the Hungarian government does not need a well-thought-out law that can only be enforced with a large financial and infrastructural investment. It is enough that such a bill exists and can be referred to in certain situations where the government’s ethos requires it.

Of course, these occasions are not isolated but are integrated into the broader aggressive propaganda against the LGBTQ+ groups pouring out from the pro-government media. These channels regularly dehumanise members of sexual minorities and engage in targeted character assassination of known Hungarian LGBTQ+ members. When the opportunity arises, the Child Protection act is routinely adapted to daily political issues.

Recent events exemplify this opportunism particularly well. The reputation of the Fidesz government was badly damaged at the beginning of this year when President Katalin Novák, also known as the face of Orbán’s family policy, was caught up in a scandal. For reasons that are still unclear, Novák granted a presidential pardon to a man who had repeatedly forced children to withdraw cases of sexual violence brought against the director of a state children’s home.

Following the scandal that led to the swift resignation of the president and the minister of justice, the Fidesz government embarked on a series of strong actions in the form of regulations and legislation. Among other things, the new regulations make perpetrators or accomplices of child sexual abuse ineligible for a presidential pardon. In addition, the recreational activities of workers in children’s homes will be monitored. Internet service providers will also be obliged to provide internet filtering services to ban pornographic sites at the request of parents. The filtering would be based on a constantly updated “blacklist” of the most visited pornographic sites, drawn up by the Media Authority.

What’s more, other parts of the media law have also been amended. For example, the government replaced the comma that has been losing lawsuits against bookshops for months. In addition, the responsibility for deciding on the appropriateness of the content of books is now being transferred from bookshops to publishers. Publishers now have to answer questions such as “is the representation or promotion of gender non-conformity, gender reassignment or homosexuality a defining element of the book?” Still, even with further explanations, the act remains as ambiguous as it was in June 2021.

The new laws are nothing more than a political tool designed to serve the interests of Orbán’s government by sowing division in society and distracting the public from Fidesz’s failures. Their effectiveness lies in their inconsistent application, which creates a climate of absolute uncertainty.