Hungary dismisses museum director for exposing children to LGBT content

In Hungary, where laws ban the "promotion of homosexuality" to children, the director of the National Museum was dismissed on Monday after he allowed children to visit an image exhibition featuring LGBT people.

The event in question was a World Press Photo exhibition titled 'Home for the Golden Gays' by Hannah Reyes Morales. It featured the inhabitants of a community-run care home for LGBT people in the Philippines capital, Manila.

How an exhibition became the cause of dismissal

Laszlo Simon, the now-former director of the National Museum, was dismissed after the nation's far-right Mi Hazank (Our Homeland) party launched a government inquiry. 

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The party, as per The Guardian, cited a 2021 law which bans the "display and promotion of homosexuality" to under-18s.

On Monday, the nation's Minister for Culture and Innovation Janos Csak announced Simon's dismissal for failing to comply "with the legal obligations of the institution".

What the museum and its former director said

Following the government inquiry, the museum stated that it had included a message on its website asking those deemed too young to see the exhibition to skip it. It also said it had no right to ask visitors for ID proof to determine their age.

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Acknowledging his sacking on Facebook, Simon denied that he had deliberately violated any laws and said that the museum had flagged the age restriction on its website "without delay".

The Hungarian law banning homosexual content

In 2021, Hungary's parliament passed a law that bans gay people from featuring in school educational material or TV shows that those under 18 years of age could access.

At the time, a spokesperson for Viktor Orbán’s ruling party said: "There are contents which children under a certain age can misunderstand and which may have a detrimental effect on their development at the given age, or which children simply cannot process, and which could therefore confuse their developing moral values or their image of themselves or the world."

(With inputs from agencies)