The annual Budapest Pride March will take place on 15 July this year. However, sponsors and organisers, such as Amnesty International and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, decided to host a whole month-long festival dedicated to gay pride in Budapest as well, which is currently running from 16 June–16 July. US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman gave a speech to mark the beginning of this prolonged celebration on Saturday, 17 June.
The tradition of dedicating a whole month to gay pride at the beginning of summer originates from US President Bill Clinton’s declaration in 1999,
who designated June as s Gay and Lesbian Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous protests by gay people, taking place in the summer of 1969, in response to a police raid on Stonewall Inn., a New York City establishment known to be a haven for gays and lesbians at the time.
In more recent history, June became significant for the LGBT community because the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in the famous Obergefell v. Hodges case in June 2015, making same-sex marriage legal by default in all 50 states in the US.
However, neither of these events has much to do with Hungary and Hungarian culture, which is why it is questionable why a significant portion of Hungarians should be observing June-July as pride month. Despite that,
Ambassador Pressman, in his speech, was keen to point out that LGBT activism is ‘not cultural imperialism’, nor is it ‘an export of a decadent West’,
rather, he believes it is an organic grassroots movement, being pushed by Hungarians.
It is true that there is a portion of Hungarians who are avid about supporting gay and lesbian causes. However, they are certainly not sizable enough to hurt the electoral prospects of the Fidesz-KDMP coalition who are explicitly in favour of a traditional family model, and who have won four elections in a row with a constitution-amending supermajority. Many more citizens who hold strong opinions on this issue are on the exact opposite side of the Ambassador, opposing the advancement of LGBT causes. That is why left-wing activists and parties tend to have to rely on funding and political pressure, such as the withholding of EU funds, from abroad to advance their agenda which is not particularly popular domestically.
To give his speech a Hungarian context, Ambassador Pressman built it around the theme of freedom and love, or ‘szabadság, szerelem’ as he was kind enough to say in Hungarian, the title of both a short 1847 poem by Sándor Petőfi and a 2006 film about the 1956 revolution by director Krisztina Goda. However, he went on to awkwardly emphasise the conjunction ‘and’, as in to point out that there is no choice between the two ideas, both freedom and love are equally important,
despite neither title actually having the word in them.
Then, in a surprising twist of events, he brought up a quote by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a positive reference. It was from a 2013 speech made by PM Orbán on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he called for the protection of every citizen, with ‘no compromise in this regard’. A decade later, Ambassador Pressman said:
‘I agree with the Prime Minister’s words. We should all live up to them. Both here, and in my home country, when opportunists target LGBT persons with laws that challenge their dignity, undermine their humanity, compromise universal values, it is a test of whether our institutions are able to uphold fundamental rights and individual liberties; whether citizens, especially the most powerless minorities, can hold their powerful government accountable to their own commitments.’
He also hit a more sinister tone, reminding all that ‘ghettos are built brick by brick’. Therefore, even a smaller infringement on a minority group’s rights should be taken seriously and countered with vigorous efforts, because it can eventually lead to the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the Biden administration he represents in this country is certainly willing to refrain from trying to live up to that standard,
when it comes to, for example, the reported discrimination against Asians when applying for American colleges.
Ambassador Pressman, a gay man himself, ended his pride speech with a personal anecdote. He recalled the time when, while visiting a high school, one of the students asked him what is it like to represent the US government in Hungary as an LGBT person. However, he was hesitant to answer him as he feared he might be violating the Hungarian Child Protection Law, prohibiting the promotion of alternative sexual lifestyles in schools. So, even as a man in a powerful position, he felt he was silenced because of his sexual orientation.
You Can Watch Ambassador Pressman’s Speech In Its Entirety Below
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