First Pride Parade Since Orbán Draws Crowds

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Hungary's capital on Saturday to celebrate the 31st annual Budapest Pride, the first such LGBTQ+ march since former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had sought to ban the event, was ousted in an April election. The march began Saturday afternoon as temperatures reached at least 100 degrees during a record-breaking heat wave that has gripped most of Europe. Participants set off from Budapest's iconic opera house and wound through the city center before crossing the Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube River. Members of Hungary's LGBTQ+ community and masses of supporters danced to music and waved rainbow flags, the AP reports.

Luca Új, who was participating in her third Pride event, said she felt the mood at the march was more relaxed now that Orbán's government, which implemented numerous anti-LGBTQ+ policies during its 16 years in power, had been defeated. "There used to be a lot of tension. But now I see people as being somehow happier, and there are more older people, too," she said. Just over a year ago, Orbán's nationalist-populist government passed legislation and a constitutional amendment to outlaw the event, drawing criticism from human rights groups and politicians across the European Union. Yet in defiance of the ban, last year's Pride went on as planned and was the biggest in Hungary's history, with organizers estimating attendance at over 350,000.

The massive turnout for the march, which the government for months had insisted would no longer be permitted, was seen as a major blow to Orbán's prestige. He was handily defeated in April by Péter Magyar and his Tisza party. Hungary's new government has not repealed the legislation that outlawed Pride, but police this year authorized the event and were providing security along the route. Kristóf Györgyi, a first-time Pride participant, has high hopes that the new government will extend rights to sexual minorities that are available in many other European countries. "The fact that there's already a debate in Parliament about whether an orphaned child is better off with a same-sex couple or in an orphanage is a positive sign," he said, referring to the Orbán-era ban on same-sex adoption, as well as same-sex marriage.