Defiant Hungarian LGBTQ March a Beacon of Light

Hungarian Tyrant Viktor Orban Humiliated by Democratic Forces

I nominate Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for Grand Marshall of Budapest’s 2026 LGBTQ Pride Parade. In March, the authoritarian leader rushed through legislation that “banned” Pride. The result was that today’s Pride attendance skyrocketed from a few thousand people to estimates as high as a half million participants. No one in Hungarian history has demonstrated the ability to swell the numbers at Pride quite like Orban—showcasing a unique skill set we never knew he possessed.

Today’s act of extraordinary bravery and defiance in Budapest teaches us 10 lessons:

1) The more anti-LGBTQ activists push to eliminate the LGBTQ community, the stronger we get. Most LGBTQ people just want to be left alone. Many don’t enjoy Pride with the gaudy outfits and pushy crowds. They rather be reading, cooking or tending to the garden. Overt homophobia forces these homebodies into the activist ranks, exponentially strengthening the movement.

2) Anti-LGBTQ activism is ultimately a hobby for the haters. The people they gratuitously attack have no real bearing on their lives. For the LGBTQ community, the fight is existential, providing motivation for basic survival the bigots can never duplicate.

3) Anti-LGBTQ activists are hypocrites who give far more visibility to the gay and transgender movement than the movement itself can provide. These primitive cretins absurdly claim they are shielding children from Pride. Yet, Orban’s state media machine used saturation coverage to whine about traffic jams at Pride, when they couldn’t find lude and lascivious behavior to exploit. Right wing media habitually show far more images of Pride than all LGBTQ organizations combined. They are unwittingly the official TV networks for gay events.

4) LGBTQ rights have long been the canary in the coalmine. All healthy democracies have Pride marches. If a government can stop freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and dictate who citizens love or engage in intimacy, is any citizen truly free? If a government can intervene in the most private moments between two consenting adults, what limits are there on state interference in our personal lives? A society is either free or it is a police state—and all free societies have Pride events, while zero police states have them. So, if your country is contemplating abolishing Pride, watch out—they are surely coming for the political opposition—and maybe you--next.

5) There is one effective way to force LGBTQ people into the closet and stop Pride, and that is by resorting to extreme violence. The very existence of these events compels right wing conservatives to out themselves and reveal their true totalitarian colors. For example, Balazs Szabo, an extremist Orban supporter, implored the government to crack down today.

“It would be an unacceptable loss of face for both the police and the government if the homosexual parade were to take place,” he said in an open letter published this past week by a pro-government newspaper.

Perhaps, Szabo would be more comfortable living in Russia, where goons beat, fine, imprison and sometimes murder LGBTQ activists. But there is a tradeoff, because it never ends with Pride. Such governments crush dissent and ban protests of all kinds. It leads to Orwellian societies like Russia, where the public is forced to call the gruesome war in Ukraine a “special military operation.” A country can be free of LGBTQ Pride or simply free, but not both.

6) The LGBTQ community must revive the spirit of Stonewall. As fascists worldwide, including the United States, try to rollback gains, LGBTQ people, and their allies, can only depend on themselves. We already witnessed the shameful pullback from some corporate sponsors, who abandoned Pride like rats on a sinking ship after Trump was elected. While we will survive without their brands, our community brand must be fighting back as if our lives depended on it—because they do.

7) Educate the public on the direct tie between LGBTQ Pride and freedom. The New York Times interviewed Agnes Mehn, who attended her first Pride today in Budapest with her son because she, “was fed up with this government trying to make us all afraid.” She claimed that she was not particularly interested in LGBTQ. issues, but “this year it was very important to come and show that we are not afraid and don’t agree with what they are doing.” These are the type of allies required to beat back attempts by autocrats to exploit the LGBTQ community in efforts to curtail democracy.

8) In today’s Budapest Pride, organizers urged people not to parade nude down the street. The U.S. LGBTQ movement must also be smarter with its messaging and goals. Its agenda should be narrowly focused on providing equal rights with the goal of maximizing individual freedom. We should no longer allow the movement to be hijacked by crackpot ideas, such as the one proffered by ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, who said, “There was no such thing as a ‘male body,’ and “a penis is not a male body part. It's just an unusual body part for a woman.” If we sound insane and embrace bizarre ideas, we will see public support decrease.

9) The way Budapest’s liberal mayor, Gergely Karacsony, circumvented the Pride ban was recasting it as a municipal event celebrating Hungary’s recovery of full freedom when Soviet troops pulled out in June 1991. He allowed it to go ahead, renamed as Budapest Pride Freedom. The lesson here is politicians who want our country to remain free must boldly stand up to tyranny. The autocrats want us to be meek and frightened. In these precarious times, the people are looking for strong leadership and those who provide it will be rewarded.

10) LGBTQ Pride is still relevant. It was easy to forget this lesson the past decade, post legalization of same-sex marriage, as well as commercialization with its lucrative corporate sponsorships. Increasingly, Pride felt like any other municipal parade. Budapest reminds us that we can never become too comfortable and that the right-wing vultures are always circling. No matter how much acceptance we receive, there is a need for an annual show of muscle-flexing strength.

Today’s Budapest Pride was inspirational. It elevated the LGBTQ community while humiliating Orban—the illiberal poster boy beloved by every right-wing extremist think tank in Moscow, Europe and the U.S. The brave citizens of Budapest not only stood up for themselves--they upheld the light of liberty that illuminated every fetid, dark corner of hate across the globe.