Homosexual authors and their works can not be read in Hungary anymore?

The bill package for condemning paedophiles turned into a “homophobic law” is much worse in practice than it first sounds.

The new Hungarian paedophile law accepted on Tuesday is already at the centre of many conversations worldwide. The package of bills containing anti-LGBTQ+ elements changes many aspects of our everyday life.

Everything you need to know about the “homophobic law”

If we look around us and ask an LGBTQ teenager whether he has ever suffered an insult or discrimination targeted towards his sexuality, the answer is yes, in almost any case. Already at a young age, many are laughed at and teased in front of their whole class for being different or having different preferences. These young children grow up thinking they are weird, outcasted and not equals to their peers.

This new law will further deepen the already massive gap between those who are perceived “normal” and those who are called “freaks”,

as a significant part of it is the ban of displaying homosexuality and gender change for those under 18, together with the complete prohibition of any advertisement containing these elements.

Let’s join Index in thinking it further and figuring out what all this means in practice, in the case of a student of around 13-14. In Hungary, this is the average age when teenagers start secondary school. Independently from the country you are from, think back on these years and try to remember your literature classes and the material that was taught. Sappho, Thomas Mann or Oscar Wilde. I am sure they all sound very familiar, even if some of these authors were not part of your syllabus.

One of the biggest poets of Antiquity, Sappho, was for sure obligatory for everyone. Not only because of the overall importance of the antique times as the foundations for our modern ages but also because she herself gave us the world “lesbian” as she was living on the Greek island of Lesbos. Since the foundations of our modern times were mentioned, together with today’s politics and democracy itself, should we throw everything out the window?

Since we know very well that nothing was more natural and accepted in antique Greece and Rome than the love between two people of the same gender.

And Hungary, as claimed by its government, is a democratic state.

What about the allegedly homosexual Thomas Mann or Oscar Wilde? Just to mention two of the most prominent authors shaping international literature, among whom especially the latter created a quite determining piece of art that speaks to the younger generation. Should The Picture of Dorian Gray then be banned for secondary school students?

This is just the international scene, but what about the most significant creations, novels or poems of Hungarian literature itself? The biggest and most important poem of the Hungarian people,

the national anthem written by Ferenc Kölcsey can stay, while everything else he created is doomed to oblivion because of his probable attraction to his own gender?

Will nationalist Hungary then go against its own history? And against its present, as many contemporary authors and their books try to reflect modern times and ideas and contain everything that makes us unique and colourful?

Will Hungarian authors need to rewrite history, literature and culture itself from the very beginning?

Read alsoMaterials about gender change, promoting homosexuality forbidden in schools

Source: index.hu, hvg.hu