The shocking story of an openly homosexual LGBTQ activist teacher’s aide caused public outrage in Hungary in recent weeks. 39-year-old Zsolt Bite, who until recently worked at the Krúdy Gyula English-Hungarian Bilingual Primary School, bragged in a TikTok video that he has a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old. Bite insisted that what he is engaging in does not constitute paedophilia, but ephebophilia, therefore, this ‘relationship’ is perfectly normal and fine. Ephebophilia is the primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, up to 15–19-year-old teenagers. The teacher argued that the reason why it is not a problem that he’s in an unconcealed sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy is because he is an ephebophile and the age of consent in Hungary is 14; therefore, his teenage ‘lover’ is in fact an adult who he can legally have an affair with.
Although in Hungary it is not yet a criminal offence for an adult to have sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old teenager, there are countries around the world where it is, because the age of consent is higher. In October 2022, Bite also shared several selfies on Facebook with students under 14 years of age, with whom he had a friendly relationship, with a caption saying: ‘These are trans, non-binary, bisexual LGBTQ students from our school with whom I often speak as they’re afraid to turn to other adults and their parents.’ Bite was outraged by the fact that the school’s leadership demanded he take these pictures down.
In 2021, the Hungarian government passed the anti-paedophilia and child protection bill proposed by the European Union. The legislation received plenty of criticism, because it allegedly links paedophilia to homosexuality, with the intent to label LGBT people. The most common argument here in Hungary among opposition parties is that it was not important to create a bill that prohibits schools from teaching LGBTQ+ propaganda, as supposedly there is no school in Hungary which allows that.
In reality, the child protection bill aims to protect children from such extreme LGBTQ activists as Zsolt Bite, who want to get away with paedophilia by calling it a special sexual orientation.
Máté Kocsis, leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, reacted to the scandal in a Facebook post, saying: ‘While the European Union is attacking Hungary for the anti-paedophile law, an educator in Hungary admits to preying on minors with a strange explanation. As the father of two children and one of the authors of the law, I can say that as long as even one paedophile is looking for legal loopholes, or if they want to annul our law against the will of the three million six hundred thousand Hungarians who have expressed their will in a referendum, we have our work cut out for us. We will fight to protect our children.’
Viktor Orbán also dealt with the worrying phenomena related to gender ideology in his state of the nation speech on 18 February. He stressed that Hungary must have here the most stringent child protection system in Europe. The Prime Minister stated that although the necessary legislation has been adopted, that might not be enough as, when it comes to such a matter, not even a government with the utmost determination can succeed on its own. He highlighted that Hungary would need parents, grandparents, mothers and fathers as well as teachers in this fight, because ‘gender propaganda is not some silly messing about, not some rainbow babble, but the greatest threat to our children,’ he underscored. Orbán concluded his remarks on the topic by saying there is no place for things of this kind in Hungary, especially not in schools.
‘We want them to leave our children alone because enough is enough,’ the PM declared.
In his controversial video, Bite also argued that should he be reported for his sexual relationship, he will be defended, free of charge, by liberal lobby groups and organisations such as the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ), the Helsinki Committee, the Democratic Union of Teachers (PDSZ), and even Amnesty International. However, Erzsébet Nagy, one of the leading officials of PDSZ, distanced herself and the trade union from Bite, stating that she and PDSZ had provided him with legal aid only because he had come into conflict with the school administration, which wanted to let him go because of his homosexuality, but was kept at Krúdy under pressure from the union. In a statement, PDSZ added that the union had never ‘defended paedophiles of person accused of being paedophiles.’ The statement clarified that the union had only provided legal advice to Zsolt Bite when he had asked for their help.
President of the National Pedagogical Faculty Péter Horváth has also spoken out on the matter. Horváth said that while Bite cannot be held legally responsible for his actions and words, his behaviour is completely irresponsible in a moral sense. He added that a 15-year-old student obviously has very little or no experience in terms of love; their defence mechanisms have not yet developed, which means that such an asymmetrical relationship typically results in the child being harmed. ‘Taking advantage of a situation where one has a much greater capacity to influence is morally very problematic and reprehensible,’ Horváth pointed out.
Bite’s case fits into the worrisome trend of the strengthening of the LGBTQ lobby that Hungarian Conservative has also written about. In 2021, The Federalist magazine called attention to an opinion article written by a Yale professor, Joseph J. Fischel, titled ‘Keep Pride Nude’ in which the gender studies professor suggested it would be great if children saw sex and nude people at Pride parades as it would prevent them from becoming homophobes later on. The LGBTQ+ activist’s article also claimed that parents are actually oppressive with their children, as many children would react with curiosity to a Pride parade where there is nudity and sex scenes to be seen.
The National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse has reported that many paedophiles abuse children by taking advantage of their curiosity.
As The Federalist journalist Spencer Lindquist put it in his article: ‘If the right aims to conserve anything whatsoever, the innocence and purity of children must be at the top of the list. As long as there are academics, members of the media, and institutions that use the banners of tolerance, anti-racism, or acceptance to threaten the safety of children, conservatives must be willing to pierce through their obfuscation and endure the inevitable mudslinging in order to successfully defend the children, whose innocence is otherwise yet another casualty in an ongoing culture war.’
Last year, a piece published on Breakpoint highlighted the slippery slope of the ‘Born this way’ LGBTQ movement that has managed to turn sexual orientation into an accepted identity in many Western countries. As John Stonestreet and Shane Morris explained in the article, we are now at a point where ‘all kinds of identities that are based on desires and feelings also are being treated as if they are unchangeable’. The authors drew the attention to an article published on USA Today in which Alia Dastagir wrote about the ‘growing consensus among psychologists that paedophiles, too, are “born this way,” and that attraction to children is unchangeable.’ Stonestreet and Morris rightly pointed out that ‘if our society maintains the logic that desires determine the identity and therefore justify behaviours, then more deviant behaviours will eventually become acceptable,’ and pose the question: ‘If minors who aren’t developed enough to give consent can determine their sexual identification at younger and younger ages, how long will we prevent them from determining their sexual activities, including with adults?’
As these trends reach more and more countries, it is quite naïve to think that there won’t be more people like Bite who are trying to normalise and eventually legalise paedophilia as a sexual identity. So the question must be asked: isn’t it better that Hungary reacted in time to protect minors from these despicable trends before it was too late?
