hungary used to wrap gay kids' books in black plastic. parliament just voted 139 to 51 to take it off. unwrap them.

via Euronews with AFP, and dpa

For five years, a children's book in Hungary that acknowledged gay people existed could only be displayed in a bookshop wrapped in opaque black plastic, dpa notes. Like porn. Like something you'd buy at a gas station.

On Tuesday, Hungary's parliament voted 139 to 51 to take the plastic off.

what the vote actually did

The bill amends the 2021 "child protection" law passed under Viktor Orbán. Out goes the ban on content that promotes or portrays homosexuality or gender change to anyone under 18. In its place, Euronews reports, the law will only shield minors from material that can "seriously impair the child's physical, intellectual, emotional or moral development," which is the kind of rule every country already has.

Prime Minister Péter Magyar's Tisza party has a two-thirds majority and passed it alone. Orbán's Fidesz voted no, as did the far-right Mi Hazánk, 444 reports. Fidesz accused the government of "neutering" the law under EU pressure, per AFP, which is a strong word for removing a plastic bag from a picture book. In April the EU's top court ruled that the 2021 law violated the bloc's common values. On Tuesday two EU commissioners, Michael McGrath and Hadja Lahbib, said: "We welcome this important signal of commitment for our common values."

Magyar himself is being careful. Before the vote he framed it as strengthening child protection "regardless of sexual orientation," not as restoring anyone's rights. Fine. We'll take the book.

what is still standing

A lot. "The fact that restrictions on access to LGBTQ+ content are being removed is definitely an important and positive step forward," Tamás Dombos of the Háttér Society told AFP. But he said laws blocking legal recognition for trans people and adoption by same-sex couples are still on the books, and Human Rights Watch says other discriminatory provisions were left intact. In September we wrote that Magyar had named the gay adoption rule as an Orbán law he would undo. It was not in Tuesday's bill.

The same 2021 law was also amended last year to serve as the legal basis for banning Budapest Pride. Nobody has yet said what Tuesday's vote means for that ban, and we are not going to guess. So: progress, with an asterisk, and the plastic is off.