Hungary amended its constitution to ban adoption by same sex couples and define “family” as a man and a woman.
According to the new constitution, a family is “based on marriage and the parent-child relation. The mother is a woman, the father a man.”
Related: Hungary pulls out of Eurovision, allegedly due to homosexuality and LGBTQ representation
“Hungary defends the right of children to identify with their birth gender and ensures their upbringing based on our nation’s constitutional identity and values based on our Christian culture,” it says.
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It also says that parents must raise their children “in a conservative spirit,” according to NBC News.
Hungary currently bans same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples is already illegal. Single parents who want to adopt a family member can apply for an exception to the rules, but generally only opposite-sex married couples are allowed to adopt.
“This is a dark day for Hungary’s LGBTQ community and a dark day for human rights,” said Amnesty Hungary Director David Vig.
“We are deeply concerned for the health and safety of trans children and adults in Hungary in such a hostile climate,” said Masen Davis of Transgender Europe.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party were behind the law, and together they have been moving the country away from acceptance of LGBTQ people, getting praise from U.S. conservatives like the Heritage Foundation, which said he will “replace the shipwreck of liberal democracy by building 21st Century Christian democracy.”
Conservatives also like Orbán for famously saying, “Every country has the right to defend the traditional family model and is entitled to assert that every child has the right to a mother and a father.”
The Orbán government, which has no LGBTQ members, has made numerous anti-LGBTQ statements. Orban’s cultural commissioner, Imre Kerényi, said in 2014 that theater and film are “in the hands of a lobby of faggots.”
Two years ago, the State Opera canceled 15 performances of Billy Elliot after an op-ed in a government newspaper said that the play would turn kids gay.
Orbán himself described the state of LGBTQ rights in a 2015 interview by saying that he is grateful that “the Hungarian homosexual community” hasn’t shown “the provocative behavior against which numerous European nations are struggling.”
He suggested that things would get worse for LGBTQ people if “the community of homosexuals starts being more provocative.”
