Dutch PM Tells Hungarian Leader To Get Out Of EU If His Nation Won't Support LGBTQ Rights
Sat, 26 June 2021, 11:52 AMDutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte got down to it with Hungary’s nationalist leader this week and bluntly suggested that the nation quit the European Union if it can’t comply with the group’s support for the rights of the LGBTQ community.
During an EU summit Thursday in Brussels, Rutte asked why right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán doesn’t simply pull out of the EU if his nation doesn’t subscribe to the union’s values, diplomats reported.
“If you don’t like it, there is an alternative: Leave the union,” Rutte told Orbán, he recalled to reporters after the meeting, The Washington Post reported.
Other leaders have also criticized Orbán over human rights since the Hungarian parliament passed a controversial law that outlaws educational and other content for children that’s deemed to “promote homosexuality.” The measure links the LGBTQ community to pedophilia and extends an earlier law that effectively bans same-sex partners from adopting children. It also states in the constitution that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven told leaders that his country’s taxpayers wouldn’t contribute funds to member states that don’t respect human rights, reported Time magazine.
“Hate, intolerance and discrimination have no place in our Union,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who is gay, wrote on Twitter after Rutte chastised Orbán.
Bettel posted a joint letter signed by a group of EU leaders, including Rutte, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macronstrongly supporting Europe’s LGBTQ community and calling it the “bedrock of the European Union.”
