Two governments have invoked “children” and “family values” around LGBTQ+ people. Hungary is beginning to unwind that logic. Turkey is using it to escalate a sweeping crackdown.
There are few phrases more routinely weaponized against LGBTQ+ people than “protect the children” and “protect the family.”
This week, two countries offered dramatically different examples of where that rhetoric can lead.
Hungary’s government has submitted legislation that would remove Viktor Orbán-era restrictions explicitly prohibiting the “promotion” or “display” of homosexuality and gender transition in media available to minors.
At almost the same time, Turkish authorities detained at least 150 people outside an Istanbul courthouse as they attempted to protest a rapidly expanding government crackdown against LGBTQ+ organizations, activists and HIV-support groups. Reuters
The contrast is striking.
Hungary is not suddenly an LGBTQ+ paradise, and its government’s reversal comes after years of pressure from the European Union and a major court defeat.
But Hungary is at least beginning to acknowledge something LGBTQ+ advocates have argued for years:
Queer people existing where children can see them is not the same thing as exposing children to sexual material.
Turkey appears to be moving in exactly the opposite direction.
Hungary Starts Pulling Apart Orbán’s ‘Child Protection’ Law
Hungary’s government submitted legislation Monday that would remove provisions imposed under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality” to people under 18.
Orbán’s government adopted the restrictions in 2021 as part of legislation it described as protecting children. The rules limited portrayals of homosexuality and gender transition in media accessible to minors. Reuters
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That conflation eventually ran directly into European law.
In April, the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that Hungary’s restrictions violated EU law and fundamental rights. The court found that restricting LGBTQ+ content in the name of protecting children contributed to the stigmatization and marginalization of LGBTQ+ people. curia
The new Hungarian proposal does not eliminate restrictions on material available to children.
Instead, it changes what the government considers dangerous.
Under the proposed legislation, restrictions would focus on material capable of seriously harming a child’s physical, intellectual, emotional or moral development. The government specifically pointed toward pornography, sexual exploitation, abuse, grooming and age-inappropriate sexual material. Reuters
Notice what disappears from that list.
Being gay. Being transgender.
Those things are no longer being explicitly treated as synonymous with sexual danger to children.
That distinction should never have required a multinational court case.
Yet across much of the world, including increasingly in the United States, LGBTQ+ people have watched governments blur that line deliberately.
Hungary spent years doing exactly that.
Now it is beginning to dismantle some of the damage.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar has also said his government intends to change rules adopted under Orbán that effectively prevented gay people from adopting children. Reuters
None of this erases Hungary’s recent history. Nor does it mean every discriminatory policy has disappeared.
But the direction has changed.
Turkey Is Heading the Other Way
Hundreds of miles southeast, Turkish authorities are taking the same “family protection” argument and pushing it toward something far more severe.
Beginning over the weekend, police launched coordinated raids targeting LGBTQ+ organizations, activists, HIV-awareness groups, offices, homes and businesses across Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Aydin and Mersin. AP News
Turkey’s Justice Ministry says authorities have taken legal action involving 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses across 15 provinces under an operation called “My Family is Safe.” BASIN VE HALKLA İLİŞKİLER MÜŞAVİRLİĞİ
The government says the campaign is intended to protect children, young people, families and public order.
LGBTQ+ advocates see something very different.
Groups reported police searches, seizures of electronic equipment and restrictions on websites and social-media accounts. Among the organizations affected were groups involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy and HIV awareness and prevention. AP News
Sixteen people in Izmir were jailed pending trial Monday.
Authorities had already detained at least 26 people in Istanbul and another 21 in Ankara over the weekend, according to Reuters. Reuters
Then people tried to protest.
Police Detain At Least 150 More
On Tuesday, demonstrators gathered outside Istanbul’s Çağlayan courthouse intending to issue a press statement opposing the raids and arrests.
Police stopped them.
Witnesses told Reuters that authorities detained at least 150 people after intervening in the gathering.
As police moved in, demonstrators reportedly chanted, “Long live life in defiance of hate.” Reuters
The crackdown has also reached the internet.
Authorities have blocked websites and social-media accounts belonging to LGBTQ+ organizations, activists and independent media. Even the X account belonging to Amnesty International’s Turkey branch has been blocked inside the country, Reuters reported. Reuters
ILGA-Europe and other human-rights organizations have called for the immediate release of activists detained for their civil-society work and an end to measures interfering with freedom of association and assembly. ILGA-Europe
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty has also warned that references to “family values” or the “protection of children” cannot by themselves justify restrictions on fundamental rights. Reuters
That point should sound familiar.
The Same Excuse, Two Very Different Directions
What makes the events in Hungary and Turkey particularly revealing is that both governments have used remarkably similar vocabulary.
Children.
Families.
Morality.
Protection.
Those words sound almost impossible to oppose. Everyone wants children protected from exploitation and abuse.
The political trick comes when governments quietly redefine LGBTQ+ people themselves as the danger children need protection from.
Hungary did that.
Its 2021 law placed homosexuality and gender transition alongside supposedly harmful sexual material and restricted their visibility to minors.
After an EU court ruled that approach violated fundamental rights, Hungary is now moving toward a rather obvious distinction: pornography, sexual exploitation and abuse can be regulated without pretending that seeing a gay couple or learning transgender people exist constitutes sexual harm. Reuters
Turkey is instead doubling down on the conflation.
Its government has wrapped raids on LGBTQ+ and HIV organizations in language about protecting children and families while investigating activists, blocking their communications and arresting people who gather to protest.
That is not an abstract culture-war debate anymore.
People are sitting in jail.
Protecting Children Cannot Mean Erasing Queer Adults
Hungary still has considerable work to do before anyone should describe it as a model for LGBTQ+ equality.
Its reversal is also not simply a spontaneous change of heart. European legal pressure and Prime Minister Magyar’s effort to repair Hungary’s strained relationship with the EU matter enormously to the story. Reuters
But sometimes progress begins when a government stops insisting that LGBTQ+ existence is inherently dangerous.
That is where these two stories collide.
One country that spent years legislating LGBTQ+ people out of public view is beginning to retreat from that approach.
Another is raiding LGBTQ+ organizations, targeting HIV-support work, censoring activists and arresting people who object.
Both can call what they are doing “protecting families.”
Only one is beginning to recognize that LGBTQ+ people are part of those families too.
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