One year ago they marched in record numbers, risking fines and facial recognition technology to challenge Viktor Orbán and his government’s escalating crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights. On Saturday, Hungarians will again take to the streets for Budapest Pride, this time in a march marked by the country’s sweeping political changes.
The event, which is expected to unfold peacefully after police gave it the green light, will be a rallying cry of a community that has resisted all efforts to silence it, said Petra Buzás, part of the organising team.
“This year’s Budapest Pride March is particularly important because it is about hope, caution and perseverance all at once,” said Buzás. “Budapest Pride’s hope is that LGBTQ people in Hungary will finally be seen not as political targets, but as whole citizens.”
The comments hint at the turmoil that continues to linger after Orbán’s 16 years in power. As the nationalist leader sought to portray himself as the champion of traditional Christian and family values, he led a determined crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights, culminating in a law – the first of its kind in the EU’s recent history – that sought to ban Pride events.
Bolstered by a wide range of civil society groups and the city’s mayor, Budapest Pride went ahead anyway last year, with more than 200,000 attenders turning it into a show of force for freedom, equality and the right to assemble.
The resounding display of defiance against Orbán’s government was, in some ways, a harbinger of what was to come: about 10 months later, Orbán’s Fidesz party was ousted from power as Péter Magyar and his Tisza party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
Nearly two months after Magyar took power with promises of “regime change”, many in the LGBTQ+ community continue to reel from the stigma spread by Orbán’s government as well as its crackdown on rights, said Buzás.
“We cannot yet speak of a meaningful, widely perceptible change in the everyday lives of LGBTQ people,” said Buzás. “Many people are still afraid to be open about who they are, about their families, or their relationships, and social stigma remains strong.”
At the same time, there had been “cautiously encouraging” shifts, said Buzás. “Compared with the openly hostile government communication of previous years, there have now been several signs suggesting at least a more open attitude towards the LGBTQ community,” said Buzás. “This gives us reason to hope, but our trust is tied not to words or gestures but to concrete legislative and institutional steps.”
On the night of his election victory, Magyar called for a Hungary where “no one is stigmatised for thinking differently than the majority, or loving differently than the majority”, while recently he called on Orbán’s Fidesz party to “get out of the bedrooms of the Hungarian people as soon as possible”.
But Magyar has not made any mention of Pride events, nor has his recently formed conservative government moved to reverse Orbán’s legislation barring such events. This month, a coalition of civil society groups called on the government to repeal the legislation, noting that it had “no place in a democratic state governed by the rule of law”.
Other anti-LGBTQ+ laws introduced by Orbán’s government are also yet to be repealed. “The most important obstacles still remain,” said Buzás, citing legislation that restricts the presence of LGBTQ+ topics in schools, media and bookstores, curtails adoptions by same-sex couples and denies the right to legal gender recognition for transgender and intersex people.
“Our greatest concern is that change will remain at the level of symbolic gestures, while the everyday safety, dignity and legal equality of community members remain fragile,” said Buzás.
The changing fortunes of Budapest Pride come as campaigners say that far-right politicians in Europe and beyond are weaponising LGBTQ+ rights and sowing divisions that are sending hate crimes soaring.
It is a reality that has again turned Budapest Pride – which, when it launched in 1997, was the first march of its kind in central and eastern Europe – into a potent symbol after the community stood up against Orbán, one of the world’s most successful populist leaders.
“The story of the Hungarian LGBTQ community in recent years has also shown that repression does not always achieve its goal,” said Buzás. “Those in power may try to create fear, restrict a community through laws and stigmatise it through propaganda, but this can also backfire: for many people, it makes clear that standing up for the rights of the community is in fact about the freedom of all of us.”