Hungarian Politics

[celedhring]

Also, abandoning them to Russian influence would hardly improve matters.

[Maladict]

Yeah the EU needs to kick those countries out or the whole project will be in serious danger.

So much for "new Europe"

AFAIK there is no mechanism for kicking members out. Much like with your South, we fight with the retards we have and not the retards we wish we had.

In that case we need to fight a lot harder.

[Tamas]

Colorful news from the police: they took in a 64 years old idiot for a Facebook post claiming lockdown was eased in the country exactly at the virus' peak to ensure people get infected. Under the emergency laws this constitutes "inducing panic" so he faces at least a fine.

[Tamas]

Colorful news from the police: they took in a 64 years old idiot for a Facebook post claiming lockdown was eased in the country exactly at the virus' peak to ensure people get infected. Under the emergency laws this constitutes "inducing panic" so he faces at least a fine.

So actually, this is quite worse than I thought. I have read the guy's Facebook post. It is a perfectly dime-a-dozen Facebook opinion post. He was wondering, if Orban said the peak would come 3 May, why the lockdown got eased on 4 May, didn't that mean that people were allowed to mingle again just at the time there were the most infected among them? He then closed off with something along the lines of "Please our dictator, don't do this to us".

So of course he got asked by the police just who did he mean by "dictator".

Basically, based on that, every third post on Languish would warrant a visit from the police.

It is a clear case of an overeager local police, I don't imagine they received a call from Budapest to grab this guy. But still shows the kind of country Hungary is now.

[Josquius]

Yeah the EU needs to kick those countries out or the whole project will be in serious danger.

So much for "new Europe"

In light of brexit too and Britain's inevitable grovelling back it does make sense to put thought into a proper plan for how to deal with leaving/kicking out and bringing back in once conditions are met.

[Tamas]

Another guy at a medium sized town had two police car pick him up last night for making a comment 3 weeks ago about the number of hospital beds emergency-emptied at the local hospital. No idea if the claim was true or not, to be fair the law doesn't care either.

He was kept in for four hours then let go when he insisted he wanted to talk to a lawyer.

For added flavour, he is disabled and was left to his own devices to get home.

[Syt]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/05/19/hungary-makes-it-impossible-for-transgender-people-to-legally-change-gender/

Transgender People In Hungary Lose Right To Gender Recognition

Transgender people in Hungary have lost legal recognition, as the country makes it impossible for people to legally change gender.

In the earth-shattering move for the transgender community by Viktor Orbán's parliament, who are currently ruling by decree due to emergency COVID-19 laws, a massive omnibus bill has just passed.

Amendments designed to protect transgender people have been rejected, ILGA-Europe confirms.

Global and European LGBT+ rights organisations have been denouncing the plans, that was, despite protests to 'Drop 33', all but expected to pass into law today.

Until this new law passed, identity documents could be changed in Hungary by law.

But Article 33's approval today, will only confirm the fear created by a suspension on changing gender in that way, in place for two years already.

All references of "sex" will now instead refer to "sex assigned at birth" in the national registry and on identity documents.

This amendment effectively ends any opportunity for legal gender recognition in Hungary, because identity documents will now reference the immutable characteristic of "sex assigned at birth."

The Hungarian reasoning behind the move is that "completely changing one's biological sex is impossible" and that is why "it is necessary to lay it down in law that it cannot be changed in the civil registry either."

But that stands at odds with the global conventions set by the World Health Organisation's who dropped categorisation of 'gender identity disorder' from its list of diseases last year, recognising instead you can identify as transgender.

Is the move in Hungary to end legal recognition of transgender people legal under European law?

Article 33's approval in parliament today is only something that 17% of Hungarians wanted. While 7 in ten (70%) of Hungarians believe that trans people should have access to legal gender recognition, according to a Median representative survey in September 2019.

This leaves Hungary in stark contrast to not only the mood of the nation but law conventions set in the European Court of Human Rights:

"As is well-documented, access to legal gender recognition for trans and intersex people is intertwined with the protection of many of their human rights," ILGA Europe" s Advocacy Director, Katrin Hugendubel tells me.

"This means in practice that trans and intersex people will be forced to live with documents that do not align with their gender identity and expression throughout their lifetimes.

"Case law from the European Court of Human Rights clearly establishes the right to legal gender recognition for transgender people. International human rights actors must act firmly and swiftly to stop this extreme rollback in a settled area of human rights law."

The amendment also comes at a time when the Hungarian Parliament has given Prime Minister Viktor Orbán power to rule by decree indefinitely because of the COVID-19 crisis.

The decree means he no longer needs to consult other lawmakers before making policy decisions. However, Orbán has signalled he may give this power-up in June Hungary Today reports

"The Parliament should be focusing on what the people of Hungary to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, not using this crisis as cover to roll back the rights of an already-marginalised group," Masen Davis, Interim Executive Director at Transgender Europe (TGEU) says.

"This dangerous bill will subject trans people in Hungary to increased scrutiny, discrimination, and violence."

It's just the latest of Orbán's attacks against the LGBTI community, which range back to 2015 when he blocked a draft agreement at the Council of the European Union which called on the European Commission to tackle homophobic and transphobic discrimination.

Further to this in 2017, he hosted the International Organisation of the Family (IOF), a U.S. group which campaigns against same-sex marriage.

In the last two weeks, Orbán went against international precedent and refused to ratify the Istanbul Convention, which is about combating violence against women and domestic violence, because of its definition of gender as a social construct.

Hungary is the country with the most dramatic drop in its score on the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map, which was published last week. The map was published alongside a report that shows that LGBT rights across Europe are in recession.

Hungary lost 8.46% points on the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map as a result of the lack of proper state protection at public events and the suspended procedures for legal gender recognition.

[Tamas]

I fail to see the big issue to be honest. I mean, shouldn't sex and gender be two different concepts anyway? Your genetic sex is a given and no amount of law-making can change that.

Of course Hungary would go with the bigotted/police state-y approach of making sure sex is tracked instead of gender, but otherwise, it's a marginal issue imho

[Syt]

I'm sure the people affected by this disagree, and frankly, it's just pettiness by the state.

[Sheilbh]

I mean also it's "sex assigned at birth". This is just for culture war purposes, I don't think any government was specifying that until they had recognised trans people's rights and documents should probably be the ones of how they live. We don't do much with ID cards etc in the UK, but I know one of the small but serious differences when trans people could list their lived sex on their passport was not having to deal with, say border police, who are not renowned for their sensitivity. If you use the civil registry a lot in a country there'll just be routine indignities and probably discrimination dealing with new employers, landlords etc.

But good to see that the Hungarian government is really focusing its emergency powers on the fight against coronavirus.

[Duque de Bragança]

I fail to see the big issue to be honest. I mean, shouldn't sex and gender be two different concepts anyway? Your genetic sex is a given and no amount of law-making can change that.

Of course Hungary would go with the bigotted/police state-y approach of making sure sex is tracked instead of gender, but otherwise, it's a marginal issue imho

I suppose a case can be made for hermaphrodites at birth, later having a sex change operation, plus some other very rare cases with puberty gone wrong, anatomically speaking. Endocrine disruptors maybe, though I am not sure if it really applies.
Of course, the non-binary bogus concept and other assorted identity politics crowds will be outraged.

Obviously, a marginal issue compared to cronyism and creeping authoritarianism.

[Josquius]

I never cease to be amazed at the transphobic culture war nonsense the hard right have started kicking up in recent years. It's just idiotic.

I fail to see the big issue to be honest. I mean, shouldn't sex and gender be two different concepts anyway? Your genetic sex is a given and no amount of law-making can change that.

Of course Hungary would go with the bigotted/police state-y approach of making sure sex is tracked instead of gender, but otherwise, it's a marginal issue imho

Perhaps logically so. Though this is often over stated by the nutters as they refuse to recognise the growing scientific consensus that sex is not a simple binary.
In practice sex and gender are used completely interchangeably and you often see an awful lot of bad faith arguments attempting to drive a wedge here.

Really if we are being logical the one that always got me is being gay. Logically there should be two seperate words for being attracted to the same gender and getting it on with the same gender. Heavy overlap between members of the two groups but not necessarily the same and the muddied boundaries between them is a source of a lot of ammunition to the religious crazies.
But language is what it is and its crazy to try and change it. Well. In English anyway.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't that the way most policies targeting minorities work? It's a marginal issue unless you happen to be in that minority.

[Sheilbh]

I never cease to be amazed at the transphobic culture war nonsense the hard right have started kicking up in recent years. It's just idiotic.

It's insane the extent to which it's gone from being a non-issue to a culture war issue - and so much of it started online.

I have an acquaintance who was one of the targets of Gamergate and I remember thinking it sound awful for her, but not much else. Looking back I think it's kind of key to understanding politics in the last 10 years.

[Duque de Bragança]

Isn't that the way most policies targeting minorities work? It's a marginal issue unless you happen to be in that minority.

For Orban, opponents to his cronyism and authoritarian creeping rule are a marginal minority I'm sure.