XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: X@Y.com   
      
   Hungary’s real pedophilia problem has nothing to do with ‘gay content’	   
      
      
   Child sex abuse within families or the Catholic Church is usually a taboo   
   subject in Hungary. Pedophilia is an import from a degenerating West,   
   government supporters say, as the ruling Fidesz party rolls out a new law   
   its critics say wrongly targets LGBT+ people and misses real issues of   
   child abuse.   
      
   To an international chorus of alarm, the Hungarian government last week   
   passed a law that bans content aimed at the under-18s which is deemed by   
   the authorities to “promote” homosexuality, be it in schools, on TV or   
   advertisements.   
      
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   Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has said the law was only aimed at   
   pedophiles. “The law protects the children in a way that it makes it an   
   exclusive right of parents to educate their kids regarding sexual   
   orientation until the age of 18,” he said. “This law doesn’t say anything   
   about the sexual orientation of adults.”   
      
   “We will not apologise for protecting our children,” added State Secretary   
   Zoltán Kovács, who is responsible for government propaganda abroad.   
      
   The law’s critics however say it will further alienate and isolate an   
   already beleaguered LGBT+ community in Hungary, while also pushing   
   Budapest further towards the “illiberal democracy” its prime minister,   
   Viktor Orbán, has long said he wants to create.   
      
   There is no similar law anywhere in the EU that is so hostile to lesbians,   
   gays, bisexuals and transgender people, Luca Dudits, an executive board   
   member with the Háttér Society, a Budapest-based LGBT rights group, told   
   The Associated Press.   
      
   President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said she would   
   use all her powers to force Hungary to reverse the law.   
      
   “This Hungarian bill is a shame,” von der Leyen said in a statement. “This   
   bill clearly discriminates against people based on their sexual   
   orientation. It goes against the fundamental values of the European Union:   
   human dignity, equality and respect for human rights.” A political ploy?   
      
   Some have called the new law a cynical move to shore up support for   
   Orbán’s ruling Fidesz’s party ahead of parliamentary elections in 2022.   
   Opinion polls indicate that a newly united opposition is now running neck   
   and neck with Fidesz.   
      
   During Europe’s refugee crisis of 2015, surveys showed that about 60 per   
   cent of Hungarians by and large shared the government’s hardline stance on   
   refugees.   
      
   The same now seems to apply to ‘gender’. European Social Survey data show   
   that public opinion in Central and Eastern Europe is far more negative   
   towards the issue than in Western Europe.   
      
   “During the pandemic it has become clear that when the government needs a   
   popularity boost or just some distraction, they propose something   
   homophobic, because their voters can relate to it,” Péter Urfi, a   
   journalist who has written widely on sexual abuse in the church in   
   Hungary, tells Emerging Europe.   
      
   Interestingly however, Hungarians are much less religious than Poles and   
   proposals to limit abortion rights have gained little traction. The   
   government has therefore needed to narrow its ‘gender ideology’ campaign   
   to sexual minorities.   
      
   The first likely target of the new law is Budapest’s Pride March,   
   scheduled for late July, which the authorities may now try to ban. Some   
   believe this was the reason for parliament’s haste in voting through the   
   bill. ‘Anti-gender ideology’ as a political weapon   
      
   In May, Poland and Hungary joined forces to seek the removal of the phrase   
   “gender equality” from a declaration on advancing social cohesion in the   
   EU.   
      
   Orbán said “gender” was an “ideologically motivated expression”.   
      
   The term “társadalmi nem” (social sex) exists in Hungarian, but the word   
   “gender” does not. As such, using the English word is seemingly very   
   useful for those who want to demonise it.   
      
   In 2018, university programmes in gender studies were banned in Hungary.   
   “It is an ideology, not a science”, was the government’s reasoning.   
      
   On May 5, 2020, parliament blocked ratification of a regional treaty on   
   violence against women, the Istanbul Convention. Hungary’s justice   
   minister, Judit Varga, argued that national laws already protected female   
   victims of violence.   
      
   Also in May 2020, parliament fast-tracked a law that made it impossible   
   for people to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates and   
   identification documents. Not our problem   
      
   András Veres, president of the Conference of Hungarian Bishops, has played   
   down the problem of child sexual abuse in Hungary and pointed to the   
   rarity of such cases in the country, which, he said, may spring from the   
   “special culture of Hungarians, which is family-centric”.   
      
   But Hungary, as elsewhere, clearly does have a problem.   
      
   Viola Szlankó, UNICEF Hungary’s child rights expert, says that about 10   
   per cent of children are at risk in some way in the country, around   
   170,000 children. Child protection services estimated the number of   
   victims around 7-8,000 in 2019, but experts are also reluctant to give   
   figures due to high levels of non-reporting.   
      
   Fidesz State Secretary Csaba Dömötör said this week that “pedophiles won’t   
   be able to hide any more”. But many believe a key hiding place is in fact   
   the church.   
      
   Urfi says the Hungarian church has not initiated a formal investigation   
   into the problem.   
      
   “The Hungarian bishops have chosen the path of silence so far,” he says.   
   “However, the 10 to 20 harassment cases that came to light did not provoke   
   immense public outrage, partly because until that week [August 2019] there   
   was not one victim that stood up with their name and face to tell their   
   stories.”   
      
   He is referring to Attila Peto, a former seminary student, who gave an   
   interview on Partizán – a politics and culture TV show – detailing his   
   abuse at the hands of a priest. On August 20, 2019, as Hungary was   
   celebrating St Stephen’s Day, Peto was taken to a district police station   
   in Budapest on trumped-up charges, where he was held until 7pm, the moment   
   Hungary’s Cardinal Péter Erdo finished giving a special mass on the   
   national holiday in the presence of Orbán and President János Áder.   
      
   The police later dropped their investigation of Peto for lack of evidence.   
      
   “For some observers it’s clearly more than a coincidence that this police   
   action took place on this special day,” adds Urfi.   
      
   “I fear child sex abuse is ongoing in every country, and not just in the   
   Catholic Church. The new thing is, that it became a scandal in Hungary, 15   
      
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