Hungary's LGBTQ+ community reels under Orban's new laws, Pride ban
Vivien "Vivi" Winkler, 27, and Laura "Lau" Toth, 37, attend a protest against the banning of the annual Pride march and curbing the rights of assembly in Budapest, Hungary, April 1, 2025. REUTERS/Marton Monus
Photography by Marton Monus
Reporting by Krisztina Than and Marton Monus
Filed: June 26, 2025, 8 a.m. GMT
Lau and Vivi, a young lesbian couple in Hungary, often hold hands walking through Budapest's streets. However, Lau has started to have troubling second thoughts about this show of affection since the government ramped up its anti-LGBTQ+ campaign.
Right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who casts himself as a defender of what he calls Christian values from Western liberalism and whose supporters are mostly rural conservatives, has passed several laws affecting the lives of Hungary's LGBTQ+ community over the past decade.
These include banning a change of gender in personal documents, legislation that effectively halts adoption by same-sex couples, and a law banning the use of materials in schools seen as promoting homosexuality and gender transition.
In March, parliament passed a law that created a legal basis for police to ban Pride marches, key events for the LGBTQ+ community worldwide in campaigning for rights, celebrating diversity and highlighting discrimination. Orban's Fidesz party said Pride could be harmful to children and so protecting them should supersede the right to assemble.
'Somehow unconsciously, I started to think whether I should dare to hold Vivi's hand in front of a child now,' said Lau (Laura Toth), 37, a DJ and sound technician working in Budapest's vibrant club scene. 'This does not mean I will not hold her hand now, but something started to work inside me.'
Her partner, 27-year-old Vivien Winkler, says it is surreal that they should feel they are doing something wrong if they hug or kiss each other in the street, as they are in love and could even marry down the line - though in another country. Hungary has never allowed gay marriage, only civil unions.
The couple fell in love two years ago. With their dog, they have moved into a cosy flat full of books and photos, and have set up a small studio in one room, where Lau makes her own music. She is set to release a track which she calls 'a queer love song'.
Along with love, they also found true inspiration in each other.
'This LP is about my personal coming out story,' she said with a knowing smile, as this was not easy for her growing up in a town in eastern Hungary.
With the help of therapy, she finally came out 2-3 years ago, first to her grandma, who was more accepting than her parents.
Vivien had a similar experience with her grandparents in Budapest who were very quick to embrace Lau as a member of the family.
They are happy together and both regularly DJ in clubs. But they feel the air is thinning for LGBTQ people. 'We are continuously discussing that we may need to move abroad next year,' Vivien said.
Defying the ban
Orban told his supporters in February that Pride organisers 'should not even bother' planning the event this year. Some saw this as a tactic to hold on to conservative votes - in 2026 he faces elections, and a new opposition party poses a serious challenge to his rule.
'We've defended the right of parents to decide how their children are brought up, and we've curbed views and fashions that are against nature,' the veteran leader said in May.
Passage of the new law allowed police last week to ban the 30th Pride march due on June 28. However, Budapest's liberal mayor said the march will be held on that date nonetheless, as a municipal event celebrating freedom, allowing it to circumvent the ban.
Thirty-three foreign embassies including those of France, Germany and Britain, although not the United States, have backed the event.
'Pride will not ask for permission: this is a protest,' the Budapest Pride organisers have said.
Lau and Vivi have attended Pride marches before but said this year's will be especially important.
Laszlo Laner, 69, was an organiser of Budapest's first Pride in 1997 and played an active role in Hungary's gay movement after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989.
'I think we will have the largest crowd so far, not only of LGBTQ+ people and sympathizers but also... those who march for democracy, freedom of speech and the right to assemble,' he said.
Hungarians were mostly accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, he added. This has been underpinned by polls. A survey by pollster Median in November 2024 made for HATTER society, a Hungarian LGBT+ group, showed 53% of Hungarians said it was acceptable for two men to fall in love, and 57% said the same about two women. About 49% would support same-sex marriage.
People in Hungary are a lot less negative towards LGBTQ+ people than the government is trying to suggest, said Zsolt Hegyi, 57, who is gay and has never attended Pride but will join the march now.
Events like Pride can help people who struggle to come to terms with their feelings to open up, he said. 'They can get some encouragement that the world will not collapse after their coming out.'
Living authentically
Ballroom culture, which originated as a safe and inclusive space for Black and Latino LGBTQ+ individuals in New York, also offers a safe space in Budapest, with its regular balls, where participants compete with dances in various categories.
In Turbina, an arts and inclusive community space in the heart of Budapest, over a hundred people gathered on March 15 for a ballroom event where participants donned costumes inspired by iconic queer personalities.
Iulian Paragina from Romania, a dental technician who has lived in Budapest for four years, acted as Master of Ceremony and also danced.
'As a queer person, one of the biggest challenges is simply having the courage to live authentically,' Iulian said.
'Personally, I used to feel relatively safe in Budapest, up to a point...Today, our voices are being silenced, it's through banning Pride, limiting freedom of expression, or pushing harmful narratives.'
The gradual erosion of LGBTQ+ rights has had a chilling effect on the community, said Armin Egres Konig, 25, who is trans and non-binary, and works as a social worker for the rights group HATTER society.
Konig was personally affected by the 2020 law which made it impossible for transgender people to legally change their gender, as it was enacted before their coming out.
While Konig found an inclusive and accepting community at university, they find being trans can be difficult in everyday life.
'In the world out there, it is very hard to be a trans person, and I faced harassment in the street.'
The Wider Image
Photography and reporting: Marton Monus
Reporting: Krisztina Than
Photo editing and design: Nat Castañeda
Text editing: Alexandra M. Hudson
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'Places where people feel unsafe, lose faith in the future, and where children see no other possibilities than what they encounter at home or next door.' The widespread political mainstream support for strict immigration measures is a sign of how much the debate in Denmark has changed. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the country welcomed large numbers of immigrants on guest worker status amid surging demand for labour. But concern grew for decades over how well newcomers were able to integrate. In 2015, the European migration and refugee crisis marked a turning point, when well over a million migrants came to Europe – mostly heading to wealthier northern countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Germany. That year, the anti-immigration Danish People's Party (DPP), became the second biggest power in the country's parliament. After losing the 2015 election, the Social Democrats made a public break from its previous past reputation of openness to migration. 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The Muhammad cartoons controversy of 2005 – in which Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked protests and uproar across the world by publishing twelve editorial cartoons depicting the founder of Islam – is often cited by those who say non-Westerners must embrace 'Danish values'. Muhammad Aslam, then a Copenhagen councillor, was among a delegation who travelled to Egypt on the Danish government's behalf in an effort to ease tensions at a time when Danish flags were being burned in the street. However, he has since been moved from the home he lived in for over 30 years – an apartment in a low-rise public housing estate in the neighbourhood of Nørrebro, Copenhagen. The 58-year-old, who came to Denmark from Pakistan with his father as a seven-year-old and gained citizenship in the 1980s, is one of a dozen tenants who has taken the Danish government to court over the ghetto laws. The case is before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, with a ruling expected later this year. Speaking with the help of a translator, Mr Aslam, said: 'I don't think that [Denmark] should take everyone in and that can't be done in the UK either. 'But we definitely should care for the people who are here. 'Everybody who lives in Denmark should be perceived as Danish and I perceive everyone here as Danish – and everyone should have the same rights.' Mr Aslam said that being part of a community is not necessarily about 'socialising with people born or raised here' but about 'doing things the Danish way of doing things and having the same values like free speech'. He added: 'You see all of these people where maybe their grandparents and parents have come to Denmark years beforehand and now they are graduating university – it would be hard to say that's a bad example of integration.' Meanwhile, some Right-wing politicians also believe that removing social housing from affected areas is not the solution. Anders Vistisen, Danish People's Party MEP and chief whip of Patriots for Europe group in European Parliament, said: 'We are not massively in favour of that part of that part of the legislation as we think it has often become a massive waste of money and it's not solving the problem.' He added: 'I think that if I was a UK politician, I would adopt other parts of the Danish laws before I came to the ghetto question. 'I think if the will was there it wouldn't be harmful, but I think it's a very marginal part of the Danish laws which is on the most expensive and least effective end of the scale.' The ghetto policy's effectiveness remains a matter for debate in Denmark. But across Europe, the country's stance on migration is winning it many admirers. Mrs Badenoch is unlikely to be the last.
