Hungarian PM Plans Referendum On LGBTQ Rights

Radio Free Europe reports:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has announced plans for a referendum on child-protection issues to gauge support for controversial legislation that the European Union and activists see as discriminatory to LGBT people.

In a Facebook video posted on July 21, Orban accused the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, of abusing its powers in challenging Hungary’s recently adopted legislation.

Orban made the announcement after the European Commission last week launched legal action against Budapest in relation to amendments that, among other things, ban schools from using materials deemed as promoting homosexuality.

Reuters reports:

“The future of our children is at stake, so we cannot cede ground in this issue,” he said in a Facebook video. “In the past weeks, Brussels has clearly attacked Hungary over its child protection law. Hungarian laws do not permit sexual propaganda in kindergartens, schools, on television and in advertisements.”

Orban, who has been in power since 2010 and faces an election next April, portrays himself as a defender of traditional Christian values against Western liberalism.

He owes some of his electoral success to a hard line against immigration, but as that subject has ceased to dominate the agenda, he has nailed his colours to issues of gender and sexuality.

The legal action launched by Brussels on July 15 over the legislation, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called a “disgrace,” could hold up EU funding for Budapest.https://t.co/tpRQQzmpkN

— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) July 21, 2021

Orban referendum plan raises stakes in Hungary’s LGBT row with EU https://t.co/OWjne1pXZD pic.twitter.com/BzgWYrmrj6

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 21, 2021