Anger was not the first feeling Boldizsar Nagy experienced when the book he had been trying to publish for 10 years was branded “homosexual propaganda”. It was fear.
The editor, from the small town of Zagyvarekas, 60 miles southeast of Budapest, had grown up unable to see himself in the stories he read.
“It was only when I got to university did I understand that I had a right to have a dignified representation of myself [in literature],” he said. “So I decided then I’d like to work on children’s books … I’d like to make books about diversity.”
A decade and countless rejections from wary publishers later, Mr Nagy finally got what he needed. A Fairytale for Everyone, an anthology of retellings of traditional fairy tales, was published by Hungarian lesbian rights group and NGO Labrisz. “I was bloody happy,” said Mr Nagy, now 40, who edited the book. “That was my dream.”
But then came the backlash.
Four days after publication, a politician, Dora Duro – a member of the far-right Our Homeland party – held a press conference to rally against the anthology. At the end of her diatribe, she ripped up the book page by page and dropped it through a shredder. “Homosexual princes are not part of Hungarian culture,” she said, claiming that “children are being subjected to homosexual propaganda”.
Two weeks later, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, entered the debate. “Hungary is a patient, tolerant country as regards homosexuality,” he said. “But there is a red line that cannot be crossed, and this is how I would sum up my opinion: leave our children alone.”
Less than a year later, in 2021, Mr Orban’s administration passed the “Child Protection Act” (CPA), which banned the publishing of LGBTQ+ material for under 18s. The law has remained in place ever since.
“You know, my first feeling [after Ms Duro and Mr Orban’s comments] was not one of upset or anger, it was fear,” Mr Nagy said. “I was worried about the children who will receive this message. I know what it means to feel inferior as a child because you are different and don’t dare to use your voice. This childhood experience traumatised me too and I have to work on it as an adult.”
The CPA is just one of several pieces of legislation enacted by Mr Orban’s administration to the detriment of LGBT+ rights since he assumed power in 2010.
In May 2020, his administration removed legal recognition for transgender individuals, mandating that identification cards must show the owner’s “biological sex at birth”. Six months later, the government passed a de facto prohibition of same-sex couples adopting children. “The main rule is that only married couples can adopt a child, that is, a man and a woman who are married,” justice minister Judit Varga said at the time.
This crackdown on LGBT+ rights, coupled with suppression of the free press, has turned Mr Orban into the bogeyman of the European Union.
The CPA triggered the bloc to refer Budapest to the European Court of Justice in 2021, accusing the Orban administration of “discriminating against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity”.
The European Commission later suspended its “cohesion funds” to Budapest, available to the poorer member states and which are intended “to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion of the EU”, in part due to the legislation concerning the LGBTQ+ community.
As Hungary prepares to assume the rotating presidency of the EU on 1 July for the next six months, an honour that makes Budapest the co-legislator of the bloc’s legislature alongside the European Parliament, Mr Nagy is in Brussels to press home the case that politicking between Budapest and the bloc does little to remedy the “bubble of hopelessness” that surrounds the LGBT+ community in Hungary.
“Sometimes I feel that the European Parliament neglects us,” he said. “We feel very separated from the European people because we live in a bubble of hopelessness and terror.
“It would be nice to see the EU not collaborate with Orban for strategic reasons.”
Monika Magashazi, a 52-year-old trans woman and parent of two, also visiting Brussels, expressed her own frustrations with the bloc. Ms Magashazi and Mr Nagy have signed an open letter, alongside citizens from Italy and Poland, calling on the bloc’s more centrist leaders to “make sure no one else falls victim” to extreme policies or to the far right – who made gains in the recent European parliamentary elections .
“I feel I am just not an equal citizen in the EU,” Ms Magashazi said, noting that nearly a dozen countries in the bloc – although not the United Kingdom – permit gender recognition based on self-determination.
Due to the May 2020 removal of legal gender recognition for transgender people, Ms Magashazi is forced to present an ID card almost daily.
Even on her flight from Budapest, where she lives, to Brussels, where she has been recounting to European politicians her experiences of life in Hungary, she was forced to explain to the air hostess that she was a trans woman after her boarding pass did not match her ID.
While most Hungarians would be accepting of the trans community, as was the air hostess, she said, it is always painful to be forced to come out in an environment where politicians demonise her.
“It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up,” she said. “Just another day with a lot of forced ‘coming out’ situations.”
Ms Magashazi is an activist now, focused on educating children and parents on being trans despite Mr Orban’s crackdown on sex education. She said she feels strong enough after years of being “out” to tackle the daily tribulations associated with living in her true body.
But she knows all too well the darkness of dealing with transition in Hungary. “Six years ago, I tried to commit suicide,” she said. “It got to the point where I was going to have to try to live as a transgender woman with two children or be dead on my second attempt at suicide. That was the point that I chose my children.”
Ms Magashazi worries that children growing up will be forced to go through the same darkness that she overcame. “We need to be allowed to educate the youngsters,” she said, noting that she can only help those that reach out to her. “They need to get information about sexuality and gender identities.”
When asked what her message for Mr Orban would be, she was direct. “Stop using us as a political weapon,” she said. “We are humans. Leave us alone.”
