It’s Practically Illegal To Be Trans Or Gay In Eastern Europe: A Tragedy In Three Acts
By: Ono Mergen
Tags: Pride, Culture, Politics, Equality, LGBTQ

The first blow: You can’t be trans in Hungary

Last year as lockdowns took effect and I had decided to wait out the pandemic in Budapest- the Parliament ratified a ban on gender reassignment, forcing trans people to identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Orban’s party silently passed the law with little to no ripples created in the international media.

Hungary’s parliament this week passed a law making it impossible for transgender or intersex people to legally change their gender — putting them at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence in daily situations when they need to use identity documents. The law is a major backwards step on transgender and intersex rights, and yet another violation of Hungary’s international rights obligations.- Human Rights Watch

In short, Hungary attacked the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and repressed political, press, and artistic freedom along with the freedom of speech. Thus, they are discriminatory against European values of liberty, freedom of speech, democracy, and diversity.

Photo by Jorge Saavedra on Unsplash

The second blow: Same-sex couples are barred from adopting

Hardline nationalist prime minister, Orban’s government has voted to redefine the meaning of family. The government has redefined marriage as the union between one man and one woman in the constitution and limited gay adoption. Ironically, the law itself is unconstitutional.

Critics have drawn a parallel between the new legislation and Russia’s 2013 law that bans disseminating “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relations” among young Russians. Poland’s conservative governing party Law and Justice (PiS), Fidesz’s main ally in the European Union, has taken a similarly critical stance on LGBTQ issues. Budapest and Warsaw are at odds with the EU over some of their conservative reforms.- Al Jazeera

According to the new law passed earlier this year, the “foundation of the family is marriage and the parent-child relationship. The mother is a woman, and the father is a man.”

In case we did not get it from the demagogue, borderline ridiculous “union of one man and one woman” rhetoric. Thanks for clarifying! I guess?

We get it. Gender is biological, and only straight cis couples count as a family. Such notions are a spectacular step backward after the world has finally taken important steps towards the destigmatization of genderqueer identities, same-sex unions, and existence on any spectrum of the rainbow. All this, happening in Old Europa. SMH!

One thing I am still puzzled over: Where do old white men get the urge to try and regulate other people’s bodies, feelings, and who they choose as a family? Yeah, that question. Again. But where do they?

The ground is slipping out from underneath them, and I am hoping against hope that these autocratic flare-ups are the last kicks of the dying body of the cis white male’s systemic supremacy.

But while nationalist prime ministers rule in Poland, Russia, and Hungary, who are dictators in all but name- the issue demands international attention. Their policies are a festering wound on our common European humanitarian values.