The storybook that opened a rift in Hungary
December 04. 2020. – 07:32 PM
Petitions, book shredding, and clashes among commentators and celebrities: news of the book A Fairy Tale for Everyone spread quickly along with claims of it being homosexual propaganda. We sat down with some of the people who worked on the book and learned that the situation is not at all what it seems.
As a result of interest sparked by the scandal, the book found its way to the top of a bestseller list. We had the chance to speak with the book’s editor, Boldizsár Nagy, and two contributing authors, Edit Pengő and Edit Szűcs.
(Originally published on 2 October 2020. Translation contributed by Dominic Spadacene.)
Since the video above was published, the Hungarian government had submitted a bill to the Parliament that would ban non-married people from adopting, effectively closing the only available loophole for same-sex couples to have children and shutting the door on hundreds of singles as well – according to the Hungarian Statistical Office's 2018 report, approximately 10% of eligible, vetted prospective adopters are not married.
There is also an amendment to the Fundamental Law on the table that seeks to protect “children's right to a Christian upbringing and an identity corresponding to their birth sex,” while also making a constitutional declaration that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man” to drive home the point of the already existing constitutional restriction of the family's legal definition, which assesses that a family is based on the consensual marriage of a man and a woman, banishing even the possibility of same-sex marriage from the Hungarian legal system.
After these legislative proposals were published, the MP of far-right Fidesz-satellite Mi Hazánk Movement, Dóra Dúró, exclaimed in a (since deleted) jubilant Facebook-post: “See, that is why I had to shred the book!”
(zk)