Hungary banned Pride events on March 18th, sparking protests and raising concern among human rights organizations and other EU countries. According to the Associated Press, the law allows the use of facial recognition technology to identify individuals who attend prohibited events, and violators may receive fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546). The party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, plans to amend Hungary’s constitution in April to include the ban, which is the latest in a series of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation spearheaded by Orbán. These laws conflate the LGBTQ+ community with pedophilia, a harmful stereotype that is often used to strip away the rights and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

The new law has been met with protests in Budapest. On March 25th, the A.P. reported that “several thousand” protesters had blocked city bridges in Budapest, and Pride organizations say they plan to continue their events despite the ban. The Human Rights Watch has called this new law “draconian,” and over 20 embassies in Budapest recently expressed their disapproval of this development in Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

On March 27th, 20 embassies in Budapest, including those of many EU countries as well as Australia, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland, released a joint statement expressing “deep concern” over the law’s impact on the LGBTQ+ community and restrictions on the right of peaceful assembly, and claimed that they were “committed to respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics.”

Same-sex marriage and adoption are also banned in Hungary. Although same-sex “registered partnerships” have been recognized since 2009, a 2020 law restricted all adoptions to married couples (with a few rare exceptions), effectively banning same-sex adoption.

In 2021, Hungary adopted what Amnesty International has referred to as “The Propaganda Law” in a 157-1 vote, which “prohibits sharing with minors any content portraying homosexuality or sex reassignment,” according to the Associated Press. The A.P.  reported that the law “forbids the public display of products that depict or promote gender deviating from sex at birth, and bans the sale of all books or media content that depict homosexuality or gender change within 200 meters (650 feet) of a school or church.”

In 2022, the European Commission referred Hungary to the Court of Justice of the EU, due to its homophobic and transphobic discrimination, stating that “the [2021] law violates the internal market rules, the fundamental rights of individuals (in particular LGBTIQ people) as well as—with regard to those fundamental rights—the EU values.”

The new ban on Pride specifically bans the right to assemblies that “violate the prohibitions provided for in the Act on the protection of children [the 2021 law],” the legislation states. Not only does this ban violate the freedom of assembly of Hungarian citizens, but it also utilizes the old harmful stereotype of the LGBTQ+ community as child predators in order to remove rights from LGBTQ+ people. These laws do not protect children—in reality, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation unnecessarily hurts and removes rights from LGBTQ+ youth as well as adults. The rise of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric in Hungary and worldwide puts basic human rights and well-being at risk, and the EU and international community at large must continue to put pressure on Hungary for their discriminatory policies.