Debates on family before Pride Parade

Commenting on an exchange of messages between a liberal MP and a State Secretary, a left-wing columnist accuses the government side of intolerance towards same-sex couples, while conservative commentators consider the traditional family as vital for society.

Addressing a festival of the Reformed Church in Kaposvár last Saturday, Ms Katalin Novák, the State Secretary of Family Affairs said a woman and a man are indispensable to form a family. Ms Anett Bősz, the only MP of the Liberal Party who was elected on the MSZP-Párbeszéd list invited her to join the annual Pride Parade as a gesture of tolerance towards sexual minorities. Ms Novák politely declined the invitation and wished Ms Bősz a pleasant time there. She also asked her to raise her voice during the Parade if anti-Christian language is used.

In Népszava, Judit N. Kósa calls Ms Novák’s attitude anachronistic at a time when Hungarians, along with the inhabitants of most advanced countries treat same sex couples as part of their everyday lives. She fears that ‘little sentences’ that may seem innocuous, ‘may engender murderous and exclusionist government campaigns’.

On Mandiner, Gergely Szilvay opines that the traditional family corresponds to ‘the order of nature’ which may only be ignored at a high price for society. ‘According to progressives’, he writes, ‘there is no such natural order, but that is their own problem’

On Válasz, Szilárd Szőnyi doesn’t find anything strange in Ms Novák’s remark, since she merely repeated what is enshrined in the constitution about the state protecting the family ‘as a community created voluntarily by a woman and a man’ and quotes as an example of intolerance a headline in 168 óra where the words of the State Secetary were characterised as expressions of ‘homophobic extremism’.

Tags: family, LGBTQ