Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Photo / Getty file
BUDAPEST - Kristof Steiner woke up sick, literally, with worry.
Usually the day of Budapest’s annual Pride parade is one of joy and dancing for the upbeat former TV host who has served as an organiser, promoter and DJ of the event for decades.
But never had the parade been shadowed by such uncertainty and fear.
Hungary’s authoritarian-minded Prime Minister Viktor Orban had banned Pride for the first time in its 30-year history, taking a page from the strongman playbooks of anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns in Russia, Poland, and the United States.
The community wanted to resist, but the danger was real.
Police set up facial recognition cameras and threatened fines of nearly US$600 ($990) for marchers and possible arrest for organisers.
Authorities granted permits to anti-gay protesters to gather on a narrow bridge, maximising the likelihood of confrontation, even violence.
“I woke up with cramping in my stomach,” said Steiner, 43, a few hours before the march was set to begin. Sirens could be heard from the rooftop terrace where he was preparing with friends.
The day before, the police had repeated their warnings not to gather. Some supporters, mostly parents with young kids, told Steiner they were too scared to attend. Corporations had pulled their sponsorships.
Budapest’s liberal Green Party Mayor, Gergely Karacsony, declared the parade a municipal event that did not need a police permit calling it Budapest Pride Freedom. But the police refused to recognise his authority. It wasn’t clear a parade, any parade, could happen.
“I guess we will know soon,” said Steiner, who agreed to let Washington Post journalists shadow him on a day of defiance he never expected to experience.
His beloved local Pride - always more dance party than protest - was suddenly caught in a standoff with global authoritarian forces determined to repress his parade, his life and, he believed, his country.
“This is not about an issue with gay people,” Steiner said. “It’s about our basic freedom.”
By day’s end, he and the makers of Pride were engulfed in a wave of public support so massive that some commentators are already calling it a political turning point, potentially weakening Orban and his self-proclaimed “illiberal” Christian authoritarianism.
At its start, other outcomes loomed: Prosecution, arrest, even physical attacks. Or maybe worse: A mediocre turnout that would hand Orban a win and embolden his repressions.
“Okay,” Steiner called to a group of a dozen supporters who were preparing to walk with him. He took the hand of Nimi Dagan, his husband of seven years. “Let’s go.”
At first, there were no signs of crowds gathering. But every half block someone would stop Steiner, hard to miss with flowing blond hair, gold earrings and a gauzy Hungarian designer shirt.
He is the face of Budapest’s LGBTQ+ community and the Government has made him a poster villain in their campaign to portray Pride as a threat to children and Christian values.
“This is what we’re protecting you from,” they said in social media posts featuring photos of Steiner and Dagan kissing at previous parades.
One woman pushing a stroller apologised that she didn’t feel safe marching with an infant. Others just wanted a hug and a selfie.
“I can’t believe I’m meeting you,” a woman in jean shorts said.
Steiner grew up in Budapest, a theatre kid who became a popular host on VIVA, Hungary’s version of MTV, in the early 2000s.
His life has tracked the rise of gay culture in post-Soviet Hungary since 2004, when he became one the first local celebrities to come out. (His bosses wouldn’t let him go public so he tipped a gossip columnist to his presence at a gay bar.)
His hair grew longer and his outfits more colourful as the country grew more accepting of gay life. He became ubiquitous at Pride - DJing on floats and emceeing the music and speeches - as the event grew bigger and more mainstream each year.
Pride topped 30,000 attendees in recent years, and floats were sponsored by banks, mobile phone providers and other corporations. The parade became a fixture.
But Pride - and LGBTQ+ expressions generally - are not popular in Hungary’s rural areas, and political experts said Orban had that audience in mind when he announced the ban in February, hoping to energise his base and avoid being outflanked by a fresh-faced conservative rival, Peter Magyar.
Orban, who has been Prime Minister for 15 years, and his party, Fidesz, have been losing ground to Magyar, an opposition lawmaker campaigning against corruption. Less than a year from national elections, Magyar’s Tisza party is outpolling Fidesz.
“A large chunk of Hungary’s electorate doesn’t have a problem with Pride or [LGBTQ] people,” said Peter Kreko, director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest think-tank. “But on the right, this is a topic that plays.”
Orban had been waging a campaign against the visibility the LGBTQ+ community for years, halting same-sex adoption and scouring textbooks for material deemed to promote homosexual or transgender “lifestyles”.
Banning Pride came as part of a broader escalation against opposition politicians, journalists and judges, a “spring cleaning” that Orban credited to the return of US President Donald Trump.
The LGBTQ+ community felt the chill of Trump’s return immediately, Steiner said. “It was like someone pushed a button here,” he said. “It’s been crazy.”
The months since parliament adopted legislation to enact Orban’s Pride ban were marked by dodges and contortions befitting the city that produced both Harry Houdini and the Rubik’s cube.
Karacsony declared it a city event. Police said he had no authority. Lawyers told Pride marchers to refuse to accept any citations for marching. Orban’s justice minister said government cameras would allow violators to be fined by mail after the fact.
When European Union officials and lawmakers criticised the ban and pledged to attend, the Government repeated claims that Pride was part of an anti-Hungarian conspiracy financed by foreigners.
Both sides knew the turnout was key.
“It was all about driving down the numbers,” Kreko said. “Approving the far-right thugs to come, threatening facial recognition. Success for Orban would be a march of a few hundred or a few thousand so it seems no one is interested.”
As Steiner’s small group drew close to Varoshaza Park, the parade’s starting point, he began to realise that more than a few people were interested.
“Oh my god,” Steiner said in a low voice as more of the square came into view. It was packed.
The farther they walked the thicker the crowd. The route ahead was jammed as far as he could see. Police had refused to halt traffic but the march did that for itself.
Police officers, some of them riot squads in purple berets, stood to the side. One of them stared at Kristof as he passed but didn’t move. A protester carried a tall crucifix. Another stood on a wall imploring marchers to read the Bible.
“Kristof!” yelled one person after another as he fought to make progress through the crowd. He looked stunned.
“It’s just … massive,” he said. “These are straight people!”
Some of the crowd was in Pride-wear, rainbow face paint, rainbow boas, fishnet hose (on all genders). But the great majority were in shorts and T-shirts, the normal garb of a late June Saturday in Budapest.
The lead float, blasting Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, tried to get started but was crowd-bound as peopled continued to pack in from all directions. Steiner began to sing along. “I feel so much better now,” he said.
It was the biggest gathering Budapest Pride had ever experienced, and the slowest. Marchers could only move at an art-gallery pace, and when the road narrowed the procession stalled completely.
After an hour, on Karoly Korut Boulevard leading to Liberty Bridge, police blocked the road. Forced to detour, the parade swung west towards Elizabeth Bridge. Crossing the Danube would take longer, but police had prevented the parade from running into - or over - the far smaller group of counter-protesters.
Marchers waved at a bank of temporary cameras set up by police. And they roared a cheer for Karacsony when he pushed through the crowd surrounded by security, beaming and triumphant in a black T-shirt with Budapest written in rainbow letters.
Later, participants would wonder if more crackdowns were coming, if they might still be fined or prosecuted.
But for now, they had won.
“This is a huge win for Karacsony and the opposition voters who made the march a massive anti-governmental protest against all threats,” Kreko texted before the parade had even ended. “And is a loss for Orban, who promised his voters that there would be no Pride.”
Commentators savaged the Prime Minister for over-reaching. Magyar, Orban’s rival in next year’s election, had stayed silent on Pride, initially saying only that Orban would be responsible if anyone got hurt. But afterward he sided with the “victims” of Orban’s attempt to stigmatise the event.
Pride’s success alone won’t topple Orban, said Balint Ruff, a campaign strategist who hosts a podcast on Hungarian politics. But it undermined Orban’s image of invincibility, an aura vital to any aspiring autocrat.
“This won’t be the end of him, but in Hungarian history there have been these tipping points,” Ruff said. He cited mass gatherings in 1989 that foreshadowed the fall of the communist regime. “People just say, ‘Okay, we’ve had enough.’”
After two hours, Steiner was getting frantic phone calls: “Where are you?” The closing programme was more than an hour late. The stage area was jammed, even though thousands of marchers were still back at the starting line waiting to march, a rainbow sea of humanity more than a mile long. Although no official count was given, Hungarian media estimated the final crowd at more than 100,000.
Steiner grabbed his husband’s hand and ran, apologising for not being able to stop for more hugs. “You are beautiful, Kristof,” someone yelled.
At the stage, someone handed him a clean white shirt. He took a microphone and a deep breath and walked out.
The cheers grew and he basked in a day that started with fear but ended, after all, with the joy of Pride.
“Oh my God,” he said again.
- Alisa Shodiyev Kaff contributed to this report.
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