The Hungarian government last week said it will ban a public Pride march in the country’s capital.

“There will be no Pride in the public form in which we have known it in recent decades,” Gergely Gulyás, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, said on Feb. 27 during the government’s weekly press conference in Budapest, according to Politico. “We believe that the country should not tolerate Pride marching through the city center.”

The Budapest Pride march is scheduled to take place on June 28.

Politico reported that Gulyás during the press conference referenced a proposed constitutional amendment that states “the right of children to physical, mental, and moral development is irrevocable.” Politico also noted Gulyás did not tell reporters how the march would violate it.

“This should be decided by the court or the police, if necessary,” said Gulyás. “I don’t know if only a constitutional amendment is needed or if other laws should be changed as well, but as we said, Pride in its current form will not take place.”

Orbán and members of his ruling Fidesz party over the last decade have moved to curtail LGBTQ and intersex rights in Hungary.

A law that bans legal recognition of transgender and intersex people took effect in 2020. Hungarian MPs that year also effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children and defined marriage in the constitution as between a man and a woman.

An anti-LGBTQ propaganda law took effect in 2021. The European Commission sued Hungary, which is a member of the European Union, over it.

MPs in 2023 approved the “snitch on your gay neighbor” bill that would have allowed Hungarians to anonymously report same-sex couples who are raising children. The Budapest Metropolitan Government Office in 2023 fined Lira Konyv, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, 12 million forints ($31,482.31), for selling copies of British author Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, who is gay, participated in the Budapest Pride march in 2024 and 2023. Pressman was also a vocal critic of Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown.

“It is impossible not to see echoes of this in your Parliament’s vote earlier this year to encourage neighbors to report to the authorities their gay neighbors raising children,” said Pressman during a 2023 Budapest Pride reception, referring to Nazi Germany’s occupation of Hungary and the post-World War II Communist governments that ruled the country until 1989. “Turning neighbor on neighbor conjures a dark past of covert agents and informants, of fear and betrayal, in this country and this region that I do not need to recount.”

Budapest Pride spokesperson Johanna Majercsik on Monday noted to the Washington Blade in an email that Orbán “openly threatened Budapest Pride in his annual speech (on Feb. 22), and since then several government members have joined in this communication.”

“It is expected that they will try to make it impossible to organize the Pride march with some kind of legal amendment—all this by referring to the so-called child protection law from 2021, which is actually a Putin-style propaganda law,” said Majercsik. We have no further information at this point and are waiting for the amendment(s).”

Majercsik said the Hungarian government will “be admitting that there is no longer democracy” in the country if it “tries to actually ban the Pride march.”

“It is important to know that the Pride march is a demonstration that falls under the scope of the right of assembly, a right that is strictly protected by the constitution of Hungary,” said Majercsik. “Therefore, we will do everything we can to fight for the right of assembly of all Hungarians. We strongly believe that this case could also set a precedent, as if the government succeeds in banning the Pride march, after they could ban any other assembly (e.g. farmers, teachers, judges, etc.).”

Majercsik noted the Hungarian Helsinki Committee is offering Budapest Pride legal advice.

Elections will take place in Hungary in 2026.

Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers reported from Budapest in April 2024.