Do children have a “right” to LGBT content according to the EU?

On April 21, just nine days after Viktor Orban’s electoral defeat in the Hungarian parliamentary elections, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its ruling in Commission v. Hungary, decreeing that Hungary’s 2021 Child Protection Law prohibiting the exposure of minors to LGBT propaganda is in violation of EU law and core values. Sixteen member states joined the EU Parliament in the case against Hungary, and so the outcome was, in many ways, foreordained. Mark Rutte—then prime minister of the Netherlands, now secretary general of NATO—famously promised to bring Hungary “to its knees.”

News of the ruling reached Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel (who served as prime minister from 2013 to 2023) as he spoke to a meeting of foreign ministers. “It’s not the fact that I’m gay that I just fight for gay rights, but it’s the fact that I fight for minorities and it’s always easier to fight against the smallest group in some countries,” he gloated unconvincingly to Euronews, noting that he’d confronted Orbán about the law. “To do politics by blaming someone reminds me seriously of how it starts with Jewish people and then with gypsies and etc.” The allusion to the Holocaust was insidious and deliberate.

“There is now no excuse for the Commission not to require Hungary to quickly withdraw the law,” stated Katrin Hugendubel of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association Europe on the day of the ruling. “Hungary cannot enter a post-Orbán era without repealing [anti-LGBTQ+] legislation, including the Pride ban. If [incoming prime minister] Péter Magyar truly aims to be pro-EU, he must place this at the top of his agenda for his first 100 days in office, as an essential part of his EU-facing reforms.”

John Morijn, professor of law and politics at the University of Groningen, hailed the ruling as historic and far-reaching as a precedent for LGBT rights overriding the sovereignty of member states, telling the BBC: “You cannot equate what is totally natural—that 10% of the population loves the same sex—with egregious crime.” European Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho was positively imperious. “It’s up to the… Hungarian government to abide by the ruling and once that is done the issue is solved,” she said.

Before leaving office, Orbán stated in a letter that Hungary would not comply with the order from Brussels, citing political, legal, and constitutional concerns. The ball is now in Péter Magyar’s court. Brussels and the LGBT activists they speak for have made their demands clear.

Both the timing and the tactic of ruling are obvious. If Magyar wishes to make nice with the EU and gain access to billions in frozen funds as he promised during the campaign—a declaration that Hungary “chooses Europe” was part of Tisza’s 2026 election program—he will have to genuflect to the LGBT flag to do so. He will, as Rutte demanded, have to bow the knee. For his part, Magyar has been slippery about how he will deal with EU demands to get in line with the EU-enforced sexual revolution. During his April 12 victory speech, Magyar called Hungary a country “where no one is stigmatized for … loving differently than the majority” but has been vague when it comes to policy.

The CJEU’s ruling has been universally celebrated across the European establishment, but the precedent is worth taking a closer look at. The CJEU, presumably sensitive to backlash from socially conservative countries, was careful not to openly articulate the implication of their decision: that children do have a right to LGBT content, or, conversely, that LGBT activists have a right to expose children to ideological content unimpeded by the law. The ruling even gave a perfunctory nod to the idea of parental rights, conceding that laws oriented towards the “best interests of the child” can justify restrictions.

But the ruling emphasizes the divide between those who believe that the public promotion and protection of the natural family and protection from LGBT ideology are in “the best interests of the child” and those who believe, for example, that sex changes for gender-dysphoric children are in “the best interests of the child.” Throughout its ruling, the CEJU promiscuously used phrases such as “sex assigned at birth,” indicating its complete acceptance of the premises of transgender ideology and emphasizing its total lack of neutrality. The EU assumes the truth of an ideology that most Hungarians—and millions of other Europeans—reject.

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