Hun­gary’s par­lia­ment on Mon­day passed an amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that al­lows the gov­ern­ment to ban pub­lic events by LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ties, a de­ci­sion that le­gal schol­ars and crit­ics call an­oth­er step to­ward au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism by the pop­ulist gov­ern­ment.

The amend­ment, which re­quired a two-thirds vote, passed along par­ty lines with 140 votes for and 21 against. It was pro­posed by the rul­ing Fidesz-KD­NP coali­tion led by pop­ulist Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Or­bán.

Ahead of the vote — the fi­nal step for the amend­ment — op­po­si­tion politi­cians and oth­er pro­test­ers at­tempt­ed to block­ade the en­trance to a par­lia­ment park­ing garage. Po­lice phys­i­cal­ly re­moved demon­stra­tors, who had used zip ties to bind them­selves to­geth­er.

The amend­ment de­clares that chil­dren’s rights to moral, phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al de­vel­op­ment su­per­sede any right oth­er than the right to life, in­clud­ing that to peace­ful­ly as­sem­ble. Hun­gary’s con­tentious “child pro­tec­tion” leg­is­la­tion pro­hibits the “de­pic­tion or pro­mo­tion” of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty to mi­nors aged un­der 18.

The amend­ment cod­i­fies a law fast-tracked through par­lia­ment in March that bans pub­lic events held by LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing the pop­u­lar Pride event in Bu­dapest that draws thou­sands an­nu­al­ly.

That law al­so al­lows au­thor­i­ties to use fa­cial recog­ni­tion tools to iden­ti­fy peo­ple who at­tend pro­hib­it­ed events — such as Bu­dapest Pride — and can come with fines of up to 200,000 Hun­gar­i­an forints ($546).

Dávid Bedő, a law­mak­er with the op­po­si­tion Mo­men­tum par­ty who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the at­tempt­ed block­ade, said be­fore the vote that Or­bán and Fidesz for the past 15 years “have been dis­man­tling democ­ra­cy and the rule of law, and in the past two or three months, we see that this process has been sped up.”

He said as elec­tions ap­proach in 2026 and Or­bán’s par­ty lags in the polls be­hind a pop­u­lar new chal­lenger from the op­po­si­tion, “they will do every­thing in their pow­er to stay in pow­er.”

Op­po­si­tion law­mak­ers used air horns to dis­rupt the vote, which con­tin­ued af­ter a few mo­ments.

Hun­gary’s gov­ern­ment has cam­paigned against LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ties in re­cent years, and ar­gues its “child pro­tec­tion” poli­cies, which for­bid the avail­abil­i­ty to mi­nors of any ma­te­r­i­al that men­tions ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, are need­ed to pro­tect chil­dren from what it calls “woke ide­ol­o­gy” and “gen­der mad­ness.”

Crit­ics say the mea­sures do lit­tle to pro­tect chil­dren and are be­ing used to dis­tract from more se­ri­ous prob­lems fac­ing the coun­try and mo­bi­lize Or­bán’s right-wing base ahead of elec­tions.

“This whole en­deav­or which we see launched by the gov­ern­ment, it has noth­ing to do with chil­dren’s rights,” said Dánel Döbrentey, a lawyer with the Hun­gar­i­an Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, call­ing it “pure pro­pa­gan­da.”

Con­sti­tu­tion rec­og­nizes two sex­es

The new amend­ment al­so states that the con­sti­tu­tion rec­og­nizes two sex­es, male and fe­male, an ex­pan­sion of an ear­li­er amend­ment that pro­hibits same-sex adop­tion by stat­ing that a moth­er is a woman and a fa­ther is a man.

The de­c­la­ra­tion pro­vides a con­sti­tu­tion­al ba­sis for deny­ing the gen­der iden­ti­ties of trans­gen­der peo­ple, as well as ig­nor­ing the ex­is­tence of in­ter­sex in­di­vid­u­als who are born with sex­u­al char­ac­ter­is­tics that do not align with bi­na­ry con­cep­tions of male and fe­male.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, gov­ern­ment spokesper­son Zoltán Kovács wrote that the change is “not an at­tack on in­di­vid­ual self-ex­pres­sion, but a clar­i­fi­ca­tion that le­gal norms are based on bi­o­log­i­cal re­al­i­ty.”

Döbrentey, the lawyer, said it was “a clear mes­sage” for trans­gen­der and in­ter­sex peo­ple: “It is def­i­nite­ly and pure­ly and strict­ly about hu­mil­i­at­ing peo­ple and ex­clud­ing them, not just from the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, but even from the com­mu­ni­ty of hu­man be­ings.”

The amend­ment is the 15th to Hun­gary’s con­sti­tu­tion since Or­bán’s par­ty uni­lat­er­al­ly au­thored and ap­proved it in 2011.

Fa­cial recog­ni­tion to iden­ti­fy demon­stra­tors

Ádám Rem­port, a lawyer with the HCLU, said that while Hun­gary has used fa­cial recog­ni­tion tools since 2015 to as­sist po­lice in crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and find­ing miss­ing per­sons, the re­cent law ban­ning Pride al­lows the tech­nol­o­gy to be used in a much broad­er and prob­lem­at­ic man­ner. That in­cludes for mon­i­tor­ing and de­ter­ring po­lit­i­cal protests.

“One of the most fun­da­men­tal prob­lems is its in­va­sive­ness, just the sheer scale of the in­tru­sion that hap­pens when you ap­ply mass sur­veil­lance to a crowd,” Rem­port said.

“More salient in this case is the ef­fect on the free­dom of as­sem­bly, specif­i­cal­ly the chill­ing ef­fect that aris­es when peo­ple are scared to go out and show their po­lit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal be­liefs for fear of be­ing per­se­cut­ed,” he added.

Sus­pen­sion of cit­i­zen­ship

The amend­ment passed Mon­day al­so al­lows for Hun­gar­i­ans who hold dual cit­i­zen­ship in a non-Eu­ro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area coun­try to have their cit­i­zen­ship sus­pend­ed for up to 10 years if they are deemed to pose a threat to pub­lic or­der, pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty or na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Hun­gary has tak­en steps in re­cent months to pro­tect its na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty from what it claims are for­eign ef­forts to in­flu­ence its pol­i­tics or even top­ple Or­bán’s gov­ern­ment.

The self-de­scribed “il­lib­er­al” leader has ac­cel­er­at­ed his long­stand­ing ef­forts to crack down on crit­ics such as me­dia out­lets and groups de­vot­ed to civ­il rights and an­ti-cor­rup­tion, which he says have un­der­mined Hun­gary’s sov­er­eign­ty by re­ceiv­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from in­ter­na­tion­al donors.

In a speech laden with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in March, Or­bán com­pared peo­ple who work for such groups to in­sects, and pledged to “elim­i­nate the en­tire shad­ow army” of for­eign-fund­ed “politi­cians, judges, jour­nal­ists, pseu­do-NGOs and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists.”