XPost: alt.government.shills, alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh XPost: or.politics
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- The advocate general for the European Union’s
highest court on Thursday urged the court to rule that Hungary violated
the bloc’s laws and fundamental values when it passed legislation
barring the availability of LGBTQ+ content to minors under 18.
The non-binding opinion from the European Court of Justice’s Advocate
General, Tamara Capeta, states that the legislative changes adopted by Hungary's right-wing populist government violate several rights
protected by the EU, “namely the prohibition of discrimination on
grounds of sex and sexual orientation, the respect for private and
family life, the freedom of expression and information, as well as the
right to human dignity.”
Hungary's law, adopted in 2021 by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's ruling
Fidesz party, prohibited the display of content to minors that depicts homosexuality or gender change, while also providing harsher penalties
for crimes of pedophilia.
The government has argued its policies, including a more recent law and constitutional amendment that effectively ban the popular Budapest Pride
event, seek to protect children from what it calls “sexual propaganda.”
But critics of the legislation have compared it to Russia’s gay
propaganda law of 2013, and say it conflates homosexuality with
pedophilia as part of a campaign ploy to mobilize Fidesz's conservative
voter base.
In her opinion, Capeta rejected Hungary's justification that the
measures are aimed at protecting children, since the legislation
“prohibits portrayal of ordinary lives of LGBTI people, and is not
limited to shielding minors from pornographic content, which was
prohibited by the law in Hungary already.”
She also wrote that Hungary has not offered any proof that content which portrays the ordinary lives of LGBTQ+ people has a negative effect on
the healthy development of minors.
“Consequently, those amendments are based on a value judgment that
homosexual and non-cisgender life is not of equal value or status” to heterosexual life, Capeta wrote.
She urged the EU court to rule in favor of the bloc's executive
commission — which launched an infringement procedure against Hungary
over the law shortly after it was passed — on all counts.
Opinions by advocates general are often but not always followed by the
European Court of Justice, which will make a final ruling on the case at
a later date.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/eu-court-urged-rule-hungar ys-anti-lgbtq-law-122536160
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