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(LifeSiteNews) — When Viktor Orbán lost the April elections in Hungary, social conservatives warned that a sea change might be coming. Péter Magyar’s new Tisza government won a massive mandate — a two-thirds parliamentary majority — and had remained strategically silent on the key culture war issues that had dominated the political debate over the previous decade.
Optimists insisted that Magyar was center-right rather than progressive. In just four months, however, the new prime minister has set to work dismantling conservative institutions — and opening the door to LGBT activists.
In June, the police both authorized and protected the Budapest “pride” parade. In March 2025, Hungarian lawmakers passed a ban on “pride” parades and public events promoting LGBT ideology by a margin of 136-27. The ban amended the Child Protection Act passed in 2021 that forbade the promotion of LGBT ideology in middle schools and on primetime TV shows and resulted in a lawsuit against Hungary from the European Union. The law itself was not repealed; it was simply ignored.
On September 12, Magyar announced that his government will revise the 2020 system, which mandated that single applicants for adoption require ministerial approval. LGBT activists had decried this system as a de facto ban on same-sex couples adopting; because same-sex “marriage” is not legal in Hungary, homosexuals could only adopt via the single-parent route. Magyar carefully stated that this decision would now be made by “child-welfare professionals.”
Three days later, the Magyar government tabled legislation to eliminate the Orbán government’s ban on the “display and promotion of homosexuality” and gender ideology to children. The ban will instead refer to content that can “seriously impair the child’s physical, intellectual, emotional, or moral development,” and brings Hungary into line with the Court of Justice of the European Union, which ruled against the 2021 law in May. The ECJ had stated that the ban on LGBT propaganda violated “the very identity” of the EU.
Meanwhile, LGBT activists are pressing their advantage, calling for a full repeal of all LGBT propaganda and restrictions on “pride” events; allowing trans-identifying people to change their legal identities; the legalization of same-sex “marriage”(including an amendment to Hungary’s constitution); the elimination restrictions on homosexual adoption and assisted reproduction; a ban on “conversion therapy”; an expansion of sex change “treatments”; and the insertion of LGBT content into school curriculums.
This is likely just the beginning. Magyar’s Health Ministry has also begun a review of several key pro-life policies, including the requirement of pregnant mothers to hear the fetal heartbeat, potentially making the abortion pill available (it has not yet been approved in Hungary), and eliminating the prescription requirement for the morning-after pill. No changes have been announced as of yet, but Magyar’s government appears open to a shift — especially as the consultations were framed as a “matter of access.”
Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.
His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.
He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.
Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
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