Hungary Fires Museum Director in Crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. Depictions (original) (raw)
Europe|Restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q. Depictions Rattle Hungary’s Cultural World
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/world/europe/hungary-lgbtq-laws-museum.html
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q. Depictions Rattle Hungary’s Cultural World
A government campaign against what it calls “homosexual propaganda” is unsettling booksellers and has resulted in the firing of the director of one of the country’s leading museums.
The Hungarian National Museum has had long lines to see the World Press Photo exhibition after the government ordered that only adults should be allowed to enter.Credit...Akos Stiller for The New York Times
Nov. 10, 2023
When a far-right member of Hungary’s Parliament invited the media three years ago to watch her shred a book of fairy tales that included a gay Cinderella, only one reporter showed up.
But what began as lonely, crank campaign against “homosexual propaganda” by a fringe nationalist legislator, Dora Duro, has snowballed into a national movement led by the government to restrict depictions of gay and transgender people in Hungary.
The campaign has unsettled booksellers, who have been ordered to shrink-wrap works that “popularize homosexuality” to prevent young readers from browsing, and also rattled one of Hungary’s premier cultural institutions.
The director of the Hungarian National Museum was fired this past week for hosting an exhibition of news photographs, a few of which featured men in women’s clothing, and for suggesting that his staff had no legal right to check whether visitors were at least 18 years old.
The exhibition displayed scores of photos awarded prizes by the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam and had been running for weeks before Ms. Duro went to take a look with a friend and noticed a handful of images showing older gay men in the Philippines that were shot on assignment for The New York Times.
Also upset by explanatory texts that she believed were “indoctrinating” young visitors, she wrote a letter to Hungary’s culture minister, Janos Csak, complaining that photos of men wearing high heels and lipstick violated a Hungarian law that bans the display to minors of content deemed to promote homosexuality or gender fluidity.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement