Media discourses about Hungarian anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation in the summer of 2021

Abstract

The article investigates how the relationship of religiousness and Christianity to LGBTQIA+ people was discursively constructed in Hungarian online media in relation to the so-called ‘child protection’ bill in 2021. The bill introduced stricter measures for offenders of pedophilia while also forbidding the ‘propagation’ of homosexuality to minors. Since governmental positions on LGBTQIA+ issues are conceptualized as part of the anti-gender discourse, where religion-based arguments have an important role, we focused on articles where LGBTQIA+ and Christianity-related keywords appeared simultaneously. We investigated two government-friendly ( Pesti Srácok, Magyar Nemzet ) and two government-independent ( Telex, Magyar Hang ) online media outlets. Our analysis identified seven major discursive structures: disengagement, separation of the church and the state, religious support, conditional tolerance, victimization, deviant and unnatural, and sin.