Balázs Orbán, political director to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said in a Facebook post on Thursday, July 17th, that “the problem with gender ideology is that it wants to tell people what to think about and how to live their lives.”
Those who disagree with it are “publicly humiliated, ostracised, and even sanctioned.”
Responding to opposition liberal MP Dávid Bedő, who had criticised the government’s stance on LGBT issues, Orbán wrote that an international network has emerged that uses taxpayers’ money to spread gender ideology globally.
Orbán named former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman as one of the network’s key figures, who, instead of striving to develop mutually beneficial relations between the two countries, had aimed to force Hungary to accept gender ideology in exchange for better relations with the world’s most powerful nation.
The Facebook post underscores the ongoing tensions between the conservative Orbán government and Western liberal actors, who have frequently spoken out on LGBT issues in Hungary.The Central European country was threatened by Western governments as well as EU institutions for banning Pride marches, but the event in Budapest went ahead nonetheless. The EU has for years been interfering in the domestic affairs of Hungary, wanting to force Hungary to accept so-called “EU values,” among them LGBT propaganda.
