Minister: Controversial constitutional amendment proposal seeks to protect families

Photo: MTI/Balázs Attila

The government’s constitutional amendment proposal aimed at ensuring that all children are brought up according to Christian values seeks to protect Hungarian families, Katalin Novák, the minister for family affairs, told commercial news channel HirTV on Thursday.

The reason why the bill specifies that “the father is a man” and “the mother is a woman” and that children have a right to their gender of birth is because “these things are now being questioned in many parts of the world,” Novák said.

Many countries allow parents to decide whether or not they want to change their child’s gender, she said. “And if a girl in kindergarten plays with toy cars, she is taken to a psychologist to clarify if she is certain about her gender identity,” the minister added.

“This deprives the child of his or her fundamental sense of safety and this is not right.”

Concerning the new regulations on adoption, Novák said their aim was to give every child a chance to be raised in a family. Because the interests of the child must come first when it comes to adoption, she said, the law primarily supports adoption by couples. But in the event that no suitable couple can be found, a child may also be adopted by a single person, she added.

Put to her that the new regulations make it impossible for same-sex couples to adopt, Novák said this was already a fundamental principle in Hungarian law. “This is nothing new,” she said.