Hungary’s government proposed a constitutional amendment Tuesday that would defend children’s sexual integrity while limiting adoption to married couples.
In the draft amendment submitted to parliament by Justice Minister Judit Varga, the national constitution would declare that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man,” Hungarian media report, while also outlawing gender reassignment for minors.
In direct opposition to gender theory, the amended text states that “Hungary protects children’s right to an identity conforming to their birth gender and ensures education in accordance with the values based on Hungary’s constitutional identity and Christian culture.”
“Human dignity,” states an explanatory memorandum, “also includes the right of every child to have an identity appropriate to his or her gender, including protection against mental or biological interference with his or her physical and mental integrity.”
Hungarian law already recognizes marriage as a stable union between one man and one woman, and Tuesday’s amendment would stipulate that only people in such a union would be allowed to adopt children. Single people could only adopt children with special permission from the minister in charge of family affairs.
“The basis for family relations is marriage,” it states. “The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
Government officials say the new bill will increase “emphasis on children’s rights during adoption.”
Left-wing media have attacked the new amendment as an attempt to impose a “Christian interpretation of gender roles” on the nation by a governing “right-wing” party.
Last May, Hungary’s parliament voted 134 to 56 to define gender based on biological sex, a move that Amnesty International claimed would drive the nation “back towards the dark ages.”
That same month, parliament passed a declaration against signing the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, noting that the convention attempts to smuggle in gender theory under the guise of human rights.
The Istanbul Convention “defines ‘gender’ as ‘socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men,’” stated Zoltán Kovács, Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations, which puts it at odds with the Hungarian constitution.
Adopting the Istanbul Convention with its “social gender” definition would “void” the Hungarian constitutional position that there are “only two biological genders, male and female,” Kovács said.
Already in 2018 the Hungarian government discontinued programs in gender studies at state-run universities after determining that the programs served no identifiable purpose and were based on “ideology rather than science.”
Bence Rétvári, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Human Resources, said that university degrees must be rooted in a scientific basis, whereas gender studies, “like Marxist-Leninism,” are more aptly termed ideology than science, and are inappropriate matter for university-level education.
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