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BUDAPEST, Hungary, April 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The government of Hungary has put forward legislation that would define gender solely as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.”
The measure proposed by the ruling Fidesz party would limit identifying persons in official documents to their sex recorded at birth — a classification that would then be legally impossible to change.
LGBT groups and others are outraged by the move, which they say is discriminatory, effectively bringing to a close an era in which the Hungarian government allowed citizens to choose their preferred gender identity.
The heart of the issue appears to be the proposed substitution of the Hungarian word nem, which can mean both “sex” and “gender,” to szuletesi nem, which means “sex at birth.”
The issue is supercharged because people who identify as transgender reject their natural sex and commonly refer to their birth names as “deadnames.”
A letter signed by over 60 European lawmakers, addressed to senior Hungarian ministers, said that if enacted, the new law would lead “to increased discrimination, harassment and violence particularly because the production or presentation of public documents might oblige them to disclose their gender identity recurrently.”
“Its adoption will further restrict fundamental rights and civil liberties of transgender and intersex persons in Hungary,” the letter continued.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said this is an “attack on a vulnerable minority group” and a “show of contempt for the rights of the transgender community” and encouraged European Union institutions to act to block the legislation.
“When governments force trans people to carry documents that don’t match their identity and appearance, every situation when documents are requested or appearance is scrutinized becomes fraught with potential for violence and humiliation,” continued the HRW statement.
Many of those critical of the proposed amendment to current law believe that Hungarian president Viktor Orbán is taking unfair advantage of additional powers handed to him by parliament amid the current coronavirus pandemic shutdown.
“Viktor Orban is using the Covid-19 health crisis as cover to push through discriminatory legislation that will be devastating to the lives of transgender people in Hungary,” Graeme Reid, director of LGBT rights at HRW, told The Independent.
“Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party has been against transgender people for quite some time,” said “Amanda” Málovics, a Hungarian man living as if he were a woman, now residing in the U.K.
“They believe being transgender is — along with the whole LGBT+ community — something that goes against the Hungarian Christian society and breaks fundamental values (such as children can have only heterosexual, cisgender parents),” Málovics told Pink News.
A pro-life, pro-family, anti-globalist Hungarian prime minister
Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary since 2010, has become a stumbling block to progressive forces both inside his nation and in the broader European Union who seek to detach Hungary from its Christian identity.
“Christianity is Europe’s last hope,” declared Orbán in his 2018 State of the Nation speech and warned that European countries that have encouraged migration “opened the way to the decline of Christian culture and the advance of Islam.”
Orbán previously came under fire from the U.S. State Department under President Obama as well as the European Parliament for purportedly discriminating against homosexuals because of Hungary’s insistence on defining marriage “between a man and a woman” and that pre-born babies have rights.
In 2019, Orbán’s pro-family government began offering married couples a 10-million-forint (about $33,000 USD) loan that won’t have to be paid back if the couple has three children.
The program is part of Orbán’s plan to encourage population growth in the former communist nation which has for years posted one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.
Orbán has also stood up to Hungarian-born billionaire globalist George Soros’s interference in his nation’s politics.
After having been reviewed in committee, the bill is scheduled to be put before the Hungarian parliament on May 5. Commentators agree that it will likely pass.