Politics

LGBTQI community will not obey controversial Hungary law

By Marcelo Nagy

Budapest, Jul 8 (EFE).- Several Hungarian NGOs and gay rights groups have publicly announced they will disobey a new law that came into effect Thursday banning the discussion of LGBTQI issues in the classroom.

The highly controversial law was pegged to a broader raft of measures on pedophelia, which critics say is an insulting conflation, and has brought the nationalist Hungarian government of Viktor Orban and the European Union to a head.

The Hungarian branch of Amnesty International and the Háttér association, the foremost LGBTQI rights group in the central European nation, on Thursday installed a 10-meter high rainbow colored balloon in front of the Hungarian parliament building in Budapest.

The AI regional president Dávid Víg said his organization would not “change a single letter” in its educational programs for children, nor in its campaign.

The law, which European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen described as a “disgrace,” was initially drafted to introduce stronger measures against pedophelia.

But before it was submitted to a vote, Orban’s Fidesz party made amendments to include new rules banning LGBTQI content from schools and on TV before the watershed.

Orban’s government said it would defend the new law with every means at its disposal after von der Leyen warned of possible legal action from Brussels.

The Hungarian government insists the law defends the rights of minors, and parents’ ability to choose what kind of things they learn about in school.

But enforcing the legislation could prove tricky, Amnesty International has said, pointing out the “law’s task is to compel the media to censor themselves” as the law is difficult or even “impossible” to interpret.

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