President Trump was encouraged by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban on Monday. After his governing party amended the constitution to mandate that all Hungarians were either male or female, he escalated the culture war against what was called “gender madness.”
The amendments proposed by the government have been approved by the Congress, with the majority being the Prime Minister, Fidesz Party. It was the latest in a series of moves by Orban to revive his conservative foundation and distract him from economic issues and burgeoning opposition ahead of next year's election.
“The International Gender Network has to take your hands off children,” Orban said Monday. “Now, with America's change, the wind has changed into our favor,” he added, referring to Donald J. Trump's reelection as president.
The gender amendments include clauses that enforced the protection of children's “physical, mental and moral development” and strengthened the law passed last month to ban gay pride events as a risk to the welfare of very young people.
Parliament also changed the constitution to allow the government to strip the double citizens of Hungarian citizenship if they deemed a danger to the state. Some of Orban's most vocal critics are Hungarians who fled abroad and robbed him of his second citizenship in other countries.
The change was part of Orban's “spring cleaning” last month to cleanse Hungarian politics with “smelling bugs.”
The amendment marks the 15th time Hungary has embarked on amending its constitution and turning its country into a self-declared “illegal democracy” since Orban became prime minister in 2010.
Liberal critics have condemned the change as a withdrawal and attack from democracy on the core values of the European Union, which Hungary has been a member of since 2004. But Orban's supporters, including Trump and many prominent US Republicans, see Hungary as a model of successful behavior in conservative politics.
Orban won the general elections for the fourth consecutive time, increasing the issue of culture wars ahead of each vote. A year before the last election, in 2022, his party promoted the law through a parliament that banned the “prevalence” of homosexuality, and content that promoted gender divergent from what was assigned at birth. Fides won a landslide after opposing his enemies as “awakening globalists” and “warmers” with the intention of sending Hungarian youths to fight Russia in Ukraine.
However, the party's qualifications as a child's guardian were severely dented early last year. Ministers, including Hungarian President Katalin Novak, and two other prominent Fides figures, have resigned amid the public over pardon.
All three were at the forefront of Orban's efforts to present Hungary as a fortress of family values, and promised to dodge what Fides would resurrect as an attack on Christianity and Hungarian sovereignty through imported LGBTQ “propaganda.”
The pedophile scandal also produced what has been Orban's biggest political challenge for many years. This is an opposition movement led by Peter Magyall, the loyalty of a conservative ex-Fides and ex-husband of Balga. Majar, who served as a senior position at the Fides-controlled diplomatic post and state agency, broke with Orban over the paedophile pardon scandal and traveled through a country mobilizing opposition to the previously unattacked government party.
Several polls have shown that his emerging party, Tisa, could beat Fides in next year's election. The rise of Magyaru has been driven primarily by endemic corruption, widespread public outrage over Hungary's rising inflation rate (highest in the European Union), and other economic illnesses.
Unlike some more established opposition leaders who have organized street protests over the recent weeks against the ban on Pride events, Magyar shunned the issue and irritated Fides' efforts to portray him as an enemy of Hungarian values. However, his position also angers Hungarian leftists, who accused him of doing political calculations before principles.
