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Marching with a pink, white and baby blue transgender flag, Corvus gathered with thousands of others in a central square of Budapest this week. The 20-year-old started transitioning last August but cannot change their gender or name legally in Hungary, where an authoritarian rightwing government is cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights.
Corvus wasn’t asking for an overhaul of transgender policy or anything particularly radical, however. They were asking simply for the right to be able to take part in a Pride parade. “The government wants to silence our voice and deny our existence,” they said. “They will not succeed.”
On 18 March, Hungary’s parliament, in which a Christian-conservative coalition controlled by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has a two-thirds majority, voted for a new restriction on the right to assembly, which is seen as a brazen targeting of Budapest Pride. Building on a contentious 2021 “child protection” law, which bans the “promotion” of homosexuality to people under the age of 18, it outlaws events that are seen as doing that.
It also allows the police to use facial recognition in an attempt to prosecute those who disregard it. The law is due to come into effect in mid-April.
The legislation has prompted outrage and protest. In the Hungarian LGBTQ+ community, some want to put up a fight, while others are nervous, even making plans to leave the country. Everyone agrees that the ban is a warning sign.
“We will be on the streets in some form on July 28 [the day Pride would have been held],” Jojo Majercsik, the spokesperson for Budapest Pride, said. “We won’t be deterred or scared.”
According to the human rights NGO the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (Tasz), there is little chance that the authorities will judge the Pride march to be in line with the new law. If it still goes ahead, “those who organise it and those who participate will be held liable for a misdemeanour”, said Szabolcs Hegyi, a lawyer at the organisation. They can expect a fine of between £12 and £415, which they will be able to appeal against. Hegyi still urges people to consider attending.
According to estimates, tens of thousands have taken part in Budapest Pride events in past years. Organisers say that despite the outrage – perhaps because of it – they expect an even bigger turnout this year, its 30th anniversary.
“This new law has shown how vulnerable our rights are,” said Krisztián Márton, 35, a gay writer. His award-winning autobiographical novel, Crybaby, was recently removed from shelves at a book festival due to the legislation outlawing the promotion of homosexuality.
“I could be banned from writing. It would be horrible for me, but the real victims would be the LGBTQ+ youth, who couldn’t access books in which they could see their stories and find solace,” he said.
When he was growing up in the 1990s in Szeged, a university town in the south of the country, Márton said the future “looked hopeful. We believed we would catch up to the west.”
Hungary legalised civil partnerships for same-sex couples in 2009. During the 2010s, participants in Budapest Pride faced “fewer cordons or counter-protesters”.
But in 2020, the government banned legal gender change and amended the constitution to state that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man”, effectively banning adoption for LGBTQ+ people.
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“The public mood has been so depressing and hopeless for so long that we withdrew and resigned ourselves to being passive victims,” Márton said. The new law pushed him to more vocal dissent, he added: “This step has awakened a civic drive in me.”
The ban was passed with Orbán’s rightwing Fidesz party preparing for the 2026 general election, where it will face Respect and Freedom (Tisza), a party led by Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider turned opposition leader who is currently leading the polls.
It has hit Lili Janca, 30, and her fiancee, Laurka Lanczki, 26, very hard. So hard they are now thinking about leaving the country.
“We have talked about moving abroad before,” said Janca, an intermedia artist. “And this was the tipping point.” The couple have been together for nearly nine years. One day, they would like to have children, which is not a possibility in Hungary.
The pair had never been physically assaulted, but they lived under “constant pressure”, said Janca.
“This isn’t just about Pride, or the right to assembly. This means that they can do whatever they want,” Lanczki, a content creator, added. “Within me, there’s sadness, fear and rage.”
At Tuesday’s protest, organised by the independent MP Ákos Hadházy, people were not only rallying for Budapest Pride. Democracy and rule of law were on the minds, and banners, of many.
“I’ve never been to Budapest Pride, but I think it’s normal that people want to show their identity,” said Judit, 75. She attended underground protests in the Soviet era and says she feels sorry for young people.
“I think it’s never been this bad,” she said. “Our youth was at least full of hope that things would get better.”
