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Hungary’s right-wing government continues to use emergency powers granted during the pandemic to further their anti-LGBT+ agenda.
In a move being described by independent MPs as ‘evil’ and ‘a step back in time’, Hungarian PM Orbán looks likely to drive legislation through his predominantly right-wing parliament that will end the legal recognition of trans people in Hungary. The bill will officially redefine gender as ‘biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes’.
Were this to move through parliament, it would make the process of legally changing your gender – already difficult in Hungary – an impossibility.
This announcement comes soon after Orbán’s adoption of legislation allowing him to rule by decree in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It confirms many Hungarians’ fear that the anti-immigration PM wouldn’t waste the opportunity to wave through controversial and completely non-COVID related legislation.
Ivett Ördög, a 39-year-old trans woman living in Budapest, went some way to explain the trauma this new bill would bring on the trans community to The Guardian, stating that ‘In Hungary, you need to show your ID to rent a bike, buy a bus pass or to pick up a package at the post office. It basically means coming out as trans to complete strangers, all the time.’
The law could unpick the years of time, money, and emotional labour that many have put into transitioning by targeting people who have already made a legal change and now live with a gender that does not match their ‘sex at birth’, which is the planned new gender category on all official documents. In the face of this blatant rights-stripping, many members of the Hungarian LGBT+ community will be forced to leave the country if they wish to either begin a transition or continue to live as a trans person.
Whilst it will be possible for people to change their names under the new legislation, in Hungary there is an official register of ‘permitted’ names created by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, that is divided by gender, with no unisex names available. This means if sex categories are changed to chromosome assignments, there’s no legal way for a trans person to change their name to something that doesn’t out them.
Legal experts say that the new law is in direct violation of European human rights case law, leaving it open to challenge from both the Hungarian Supreme Court and the European sour of human rights. During a hearing in the country’s parliamentary judicial committee, Bernadett Szél, an independent MP, tried to read out a letter from trans people explaining how harmful the law would be for them, but was told by the committee supposedly neutral chair that the letter was ‘not relevant.’
