In last April's child protection referendum, almost 4 million Hungarians opted to protect children from gender ideology and efforts to include sex education in curricula and media content available to minors. Hungarian voters also stood up for the inalienable right of parents to decide on the sexual education of their children. With the infringement procedure and now the court case against Hungary, Brussels is spinning this into a debate on whether the law is “anti-gay,” when, in reality, it is not “anti-anything.” Instead, it’s strictly pro-children and pro-family.
In June 2021, the Hungarian parliament adopted a law on child protection that introduced Europe’s first legislation designed to protect kids from gender ideology in schools, reinforce previous family protection measures, and equip our courts with tools to impose more serious sentences on those that commit sex crimes against children.
In a referendum on April 3, 2022, almost 4 million Hungarians affirmed the government’s policy direction voting that child protection must remain a priority and that decisions regarding their children’s upbringing must remain the sole right of parents.
Such a strong consensus behind a national policy initiative should have been reported on as the success story it really is, and a true celebration of democracy. In an ideal world, this is how the headlines should have read:
“Hungary bolsters child protection measures with new law adopted in parliament.”
Instead, the usual critics among mainstream media and liberal NGOs rushed to spin their own narrative with its strong, anti-Hungary and anti-child protection bias.
Fast forward a couple of months and the “rule of law” case against Hungary (and Poland), including references to our child protection law, was already in front of the European Court of Justice. Unsurprisingly, the ECJ handed down a decision, one that was purely political, tying EU fund transfers to the façade of “rule of law” requirements.
As Justice Minister Judit Varga also pointed out last February, with this step, the European Commission and the Court overstepped their purview, as child protection is a matter of national competency and therefore falls far outside Brussels’ sphere of authority.
Doubling down on their efforts to make us change course, the European Commission launched a new case regarding the child protection law in front of the Luxembourg-based EU court last December. While Minister Varga announced two weeks ago that Hungary submitted a counter-request to the court, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) revealed earlier this week that the EP would join the case on the EC’s side.
Hurray. The EP’s anti-Hungary chorus will once again do everything it can to stifle a meaningful discussion about protecting our children and families.
This is, however, not the first time (and I’m sure it won’t be the last) that one of our policies has faced a liberal crusade. In 2016, the Brussels bureaucracy tried to make us alter our strict migration and border protection policy to give way to hundreds of thousands of illegal, undocumented migrants who were so eager to reach Germany and other Western European countries. Back then, we called for a referendum on migration, and 98 percent of respondents refused Brussels’ migration policy.
This time, the referendum has already been conducted and the results simply cannot be questioned: Some 4 million people have voiced their wish to protect our children at all costs, and, as we have done many times before, the Hungarian government will go to extremes to make sure the interests of our citizens are respected.
Here's a question: How many of those political parties represented by the MEPs that voted to join the EC’s case would have the courage to put these questions about the sex education of children to the voters back home?