On Tuesday, October 13, Hungary’s parliament voted 139 to 51 to cut the anti-LGBTQ+ provisions out of the 2021 “child protection” law, the signature Orbán-era measure that made it illegal to show queer and trans lives to anyone under 18.

It’s the first major rollback of Viktor Orbán’s LGBTQ+ restrictions since Péter Magyar became prime minister in May, AFP reports. The governing Tisza party has a two-thirds majority and passed the bill without opposition votes. Orbán’s Fidesz voted against.

For five years, Hungarian publishers, broadcasters, teachers and booksellers worked around a vague rule nobody wanted to test. As of this week, that rule is gone. Here’s what that does and doesn’t mean.

What changed

The 2021 law banned the “portrayal” or “promotion” of sexual and gender diversity in content accessible to children, including the “promotion” of homosexuality and gender transition to under-18s, according to Euronews.

Those clauses are out. In their place, the amended law protects children from material that can “seriously impair the child’s physical, intellectual, emotional or moral development.” That is a standard about harm, not about who appears on screen.

Tamás Dombos of the Háttér Society, a Hungarian LGBTQI rights group, told Euronews the changes remove the “homophobic and transphobic provisions,” in line with the EU court’s ruling.

Why it happened now

In April, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Commission v Hungary that the law violated EU law, finding it breached “the very identity” of the bloc. The same month, Magyar’s Tisza party won a landslide election that ended Orbán’s 16 years in power, and he was sworn in on May 9.

The government tabled the bill on September 14. A month later, it’s law.

How the government talks about it matters. Magyar has framed the change as strengthening child protection “regardless of sexual orientation,” not as restoring anyone’s rights. Szilvia Gyurkó, a state secretary at the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs, put it more directly to AFP: the aim is to “move away from a flawed paradigm, linking child protection in any way to sexual orientation or gender identities.”

Fidesz accused the government of “neutering” the original law under EU pressure.

What didn’t change

This is where the headline and the reality part ways. The vote dealt with one law. Several others are still standing:

  • Legal gender recognition. Hungary barred trans people from changing their legal gender in 2020. That ban remains.
  • Adoption. Rules that keep same-sex couples from adopting are still in force. Magyar said in September his government would change them; no bill has passed.
  • The constitution. Discriminatory language in the Fundamental Law wasn’t addressed.
  • The Pride ban framework. The Freedom of Assembly Act, which Human Rights Watch notes has been used to prohibit Pride and other LGBT assemblies, wasn’t touched.

That last one is worth sitting with. In 2025, the 2021 law was amended so it could serve as the basis for banning Pride marches. This summer, after the court ruling, Budapest Pride marched with police permission. But the assembly rules that made a ban possible are still on the books, available to any future government that wants them back.

There’s one more open question. When the bill was tabled, HRW pointed out that section 5/A of the Family Protection Act contained substantially the same content restrictions and wasn’t covered. Reporting on Tuesday’s vote doesn’t say whether that was fixed before the final text passed. We’ll update this piece if it becomes clear.

What activists are saying

Dombos’s reaction was measured, and that’s the useful read. “The fact that restrictions on access to LGBTQ+ content are being removed is definitely an important and positive step forward,” he told Euronews. “But there is still a lot to do.”

On gender recognition and adoption, his answer was honest about the uncertainty: “we don’t know whether the government’s working on that.”

Brussels, unsurprisingly, was warmer. EU Commissioners Michael McGrath and Hadja Lahbib said in a joint statement: “We welcome this important signal of commitment for our common values.”

Why this matters beyond Hungary

Hungary’s 2021 law didn’t stay in Hungary. It became a template that politicians across the region pointed to, and the EU court’s ruling against it is now case law every member state has to live with. A template that’s been struck down in Luxembourg and then voted out in Budapest is a much weaker template.

It also shows something hopeful about how fast things can move. In April 2025, Hungary wrote a Pride ban into its constitution. Eighteen months later, the law at the centre of it all has lost its anti-LGBTQ+ teeth.

The honest summary: a real win, on one law, with the rest of the structure still standing. Tisza has the two-thirds majority it would need to change the constitution too. Whether it uses it is the story to watch next.