Guest AuthorAs a queer-identifying French and Hungarian living in Paris, I was shocked to hear that on March 18, 2025, a text was voted into law by the Hungarian parliament which made Pride parades illegal. This is an amendment to the law on public assemblies, which, under the pretext of child protection, prohibits any organization and/or participation in demonstrations where minors could be exposed to homosexuality or transgender identity. This effectively bans any public presence of LGBTQIA+ communities and movements, and of course, it specifically prohibits the Budapest Pride Parade. The penalties are severe: up to 200,000 forints (approximately 500 euros) for participants, and up to one year in prison for organizers. Under the new law, the police are authorized to use facial recognition software to identify participants.
This wasn’t the first time I witnessed the far-right government making laws to discriminate against the LGBTQIA+ community :
• In August 2018, they made universities remove gender studies programs.
• In May 2020, the parliament voted on a bill which made it impossible for individuals to change their legal gender.
• In June 2021, they introduced a law prohibiting the showing of “any content portraying or promoting sex reassignment or homosexuality” to minors.
• In April 2023, Hungary created a law which allows citizens to report to the state people who “contest” children’s right to “an identity appropriate to their sex at birth.”
These discriminating laws have a profound and harsh emotional impact on me, even though I no longer live in Budapest. I’m not personally in danger, but I’m saddened that the place where I grew up isn’t safe for everyone. My friends and family who still live there are increasingly worried about what could come next.
The Pride ban led to many demonstrations in Budapest where queer people and allies went out to protest for the fundamental right to assembly. A “Grey Pride” event was also organized to counter and mock the ban, with participants dressing only in gray shades and waving grey flags. Many events are still held by LGBTQIA+ associations in Budapest during Pride month, a lot of them outdoors. The mayor of the city, Gergely Karácsony, has been trying to support Pride by finding loopholes make it legal as a municipal event. He has also shown up at other Pride events in Europe to seek help and solidarity.
The ban is a further step from human rights and democracy, increasing uncertainty and cleavage among the population of the country. I’m worried that it will make us less visible, marginalized, and normalize our discrimination. I’m saddened seeing a lot of my fellow Hungarian queer friends being more and more desperate about our country. Even my French LGBTQIA+ friends are affected; they fear that this will lead to Pride bans in other European countries too.
Therefore, as someone in the visual arts, I felt the need to express myself by creating and showing what many of us are feeling: that the Hungarian government seeks to instrumentalize us, make us invisible, and censor us.
I asked Hungarian queer-identifying friends, acquaintances, and people on social media to send me self-portraits, as well as short texts or sentences expressing their emotions about the situation. I received many pictures, people dressed in colorful outfits or everyday clothes, alone or with friends and lovers, during a Pride parade or an average day, showing the diversity of how many ways people express their queerness.
I printed and folded the images to create collages; for me, this is a way to represent our feeling of displacement, our anxiety, the fear of being erased, and our will to exist as we are, despite everything.
Collages and text by Léa Fiterman.
Léa Fiterman is originally from Budapest and lives in Paris. Enriched by these two countries, she often combines photographs with graphic research to contextualize and strengthen her creative approach, better highlighting her aesthetic intention. She also extends her graphic experimentations and research in the form of zines, highlighting the intention of her pictures through layout and design. You can see more of her work here.