press release
The government’s anti-LGBTQI referendum, held on the same day as general elections, failed.
On Sunday, more than 1.6 million Hungarians cast invalid votes to reject the government's manipulative and fear-mongering referendum. The invalidity of the referendum shows that the majority of Hungarians do not support the government's exclusionary policies. Five days after the miserable failure of the government's anti-LGBTQI referendum, the National Election Committee (NEC) suddenly realized that the months-long campaign "defeats the constitutional purpose of the exercise of power."
41% of the total population is not planning on participating in the referendum and almost half of the opposition voters will vote invalid on the 3rd of April - finds a representative survey by Medián commissioned by Amnesty International and Háttér Society.
The Curia, the highest regular court in Hungary, has refused to validate a question the government submitted as part of an anti-LGBTQI referendum. Although the National Electoral Commission accepted the question "Do you support making gender reassignment treatments available to underage children?", the Curia ruled that this question cannot be the subject of a referendum.
Most Hungarians support that young people hear about sexual and gender minorities, and don’t want the government to decide what sex education covers - according to a representative poll commissioned by Amnesty International Hungary and Háttér Society and conducted by polling agency Medián.
The Hungarian government faces serious criticisms on the recently adopted homophobic and transphobic propaganda law. When questioned by European leaders, Orbán spread a number of lies to defend the law. In this article we provide a detailed rebuttal of those lies.
Timeline of how the Fidesz-KDNP government and its parliamentary majority has been systematically undermining the freedom and equal rights of sexual and gender minorities ever since they came into power in 2010, and especially since the spring of 2019.
Despite thousands of protesters, and a petition signed by more than 100,000 people, the Parliament doesn’t care about the opinion of Hungarians. On Tuesday, June 15, the Parliament passed the propaganda law, thus banning LGBTQI-themed educational programs, products, and advertising for persons under 18 years of age.
Yesterday, June 10, the Hungarian ruling party, Fidesz, introduced an amendment that would severely restrict freedom of speech and children’s rights by banning LGBTQI-themed educational programs and public service advertisements. Out of Hungarian LGBTQI people, 42% have thought about suicide and 30% have attempted it. This new amendment - which eerily mimics the Russian propaganda law - would further poison public opinion.
In January the pro-government news site Vasarnap.hu published a story about a “boy with two fathers”, in which, besides using derogatory language, they also claimed the couple tricked the authorities by hiding they were a same-sex couple and pretending only one of them would adopt as a single parent. The Court declared these were unfounded allegations and ordered the news site to rectify their mistake.