Written by Vasárnap.hu publicist, Francesca Rivafinoli.
This week, quite a few men were beaten again in various parts of Spain, specifically because of their homosexuality - but who has time to marvel at the persistent and factually existing homophobic aggression in Western Europe, once there is drama: the eight-year-old Csengés and Leventes cannot be informed in school workshops about that lesbians can be fertilized with the help of "sperms from nice Danish men" (a quote from a German workbook, which was eventually withdrawn due to mass outrage), moreover, "potential LGBT*I*Q" students in Budapest cannot be encouraged by queer activists to lead an alternative lifestyle (as in Berlin according to the description of the relevant project). And if this can be added at all: no Hungarian undergrad needs to know what "non-binary" and "cis-" are (in fact, they even ask about this in Manchester).
The same moms who, when they come across a landscape word in the reading book, snort indignantly on Facebook about the complicated terms they fill the poor little ones' heads with, now self-consciously display the rainbow on their profile picture, demanding that they can indeed bombard the same young students at school (or even oviban) a wide range of different sexual orientations and fertilization methods.
In any case, now that the ball is on, and Brussels has decided to adopt Putin's method of extortion by shutting off the gas tap, withholding the money owed to the Hungarians for ideological reasons, and then, for the sake of security, Jean Asselborn, the hereditary Minister of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg, even suggested : in the context of an EU referendum, in a grassroots democratic way, for example, the Sámi, the Maltese and the Romanians should vote Viktor Orbán out of power with immediate effect (who was elected by four and a half times as many European citizens as there are Luxembourgers on Earth), so now that the scandal due to the violation of European Values is starting to swell to cosmic proportions, let's examine a little closer to the matter. I mean this European Value.
Portugal became a member of the European Union in 1986, compared to that, until 1999 homosexuals were not even allowed to serve in the army, let alone enter into a partnership: this only became possible in 2001. In other words , Portugal was a member of the EU for 15 years without the state recognizing the love of José and João in any form. At that time, where did the European values wander?
Or there is Greece. It has been part of the European Union since 1981, but during the first 21 years of its membership, it was happy without granting any rights to LGBT people. In 2002, with careful liberalization, it allowed openly gay or bisexual people to serve as soldiers, and then came another 13 years of grave silence, so that in 2015, in the 34th year of its EU membership, six years after the entry into force of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, it would provide for same-sex partnerships about the possibility of a relationship. Not even under pressure from Brussels: as a non-EU body, it was the European Court of Human Rights that drew attention to discrimination. It's as if Hungary, which joined in 2004, will be tapped on the shoulder for the first time sometime in the 2030s by an international organization saying, hey, if I'm not bothering you, make some gesture towards non-heterosexual citizens, but really only if you get the hang of it.
And let's not forget about Ireland, which became an EU country in 1973, but at the same time its legal system directly punished homosexual relationships until 1993. It was easily admitted to the European Communities knowing this, and there is no trace of the European Parliament demanding the end of the deprivation of rights in the Sargentini reports. The change was also initiated here by the European Court of Human Rights; if it were up to the European Union, Ireland would have languished in the Brussels institutions for some time without anyone asking about the well-being of its LGBT citizens.
Therefore, if any kind of discrimination against LGBT people is contrary to EU values, it would mean that the European Union consistently ignored these values until roughly the mid-2010s. He looked down on entire generations of disadvantaged homosexuals, who not only couldn't go to school, but couldn't even go to the registrar's office, and in the case of Ireland, they couldn't even go to each other's bedrooms in secret. With such a background, the Brussels production just presented is not very authentic.
Of course, there is also the possibility that the European value is something that will suddenly become: shucks! appears out of nowhere. In the case of Ireland and Portugal, it did not exist yet, but it appeared in all its glory sometime in the 2010s, when the V4s were "defaced". However, if this is the case, in accordance with the EU principle of transparency, it would be information of public interest to know exactly when and how the enlightenment took place in Brussels. And at the same time , a forecast of what European Value is expected to appear the day after tomorrow would also be useful. Just so that the achievement doesn't hit us unprepared.
Author: Francesca Rivafinoli
(Header image: MTI/EPA pool/Johanna Geron)
