Despite temperatures over 100 degrees, tens of thousands of people attended Budapest's first post-Orbán Pride march. Orbán's far-right government had prohibited such events, but LBGTQ Hungarians and their friends defied those bans and the new management is more encouraging.
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.
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.
Last years' turnout was so massive, in fact, that it served as a bellwether for the emerging scale of opposition to Orbán despite years of democratic backsliding. He was ultimately clearly beaten in April's election by a center-right challenger, Péter Magyar, now the country's Prime Minister. The Pride ban has not been repealed, but police explicitly authorized this year's event and stewarded it.
Tens of thousands march in the first Budapest Pride since Viktor Orbán was voted out [PBS]
Previously:
• Fantastic video of New York City's Gay Pride Parade in 1989
• The Decent People: LGBT pride in the former Yugoslavia
• Witness the birth of Pride: Footage of the first Gay Liberation Day March (1970)
