A top-ranking official in Hungarys ultraconservative government has stepped down after being caught fleeing an alleged gay sex party.
József Szájer announced his resignation as a member of the European Parliament for Prime Minister Viktor Orbáns Fidesz party on Sunday. The married official admitted to attending what he called a private party in Brussels on Friday night, despite the Belgian capital being under coronavirus lockdown.
At least 20 naked men including several diplomats were discovered at a gathering above a gay bar in central Brussels, according to Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure, which described it as an orgy.
Szájer, 59, was injured trying to jump from a first-floor window, according to the public prosecutors office, but was apprehended by authorities, who found narcotics in his backpack.
Unable to produce identification, Szájer was escorted by police to his residence, where he presented a diplomatic passport that confirmed his identity.
Szájer was arrested, but tried to claim European parliamentary immunity, police said, leading to the involvement of Belgiums foreign ministry.
According to the Times of London, others arrested at the party included diplomats linked to the conservative European Peoples Party, of which Szájer was vice-chair and chief whip.
In a statement Tuesday to the Hungarian press, Szájer apologized for violating social distancing regulations.
I am sorry that I have broken the rules of assembly, this was irresponsible on my part, he said. I will take the sanctions that come with it. He denied using any narcotics, claiming to have offered to take a drug test on the spot. Police said an ecstasy pill was found. Its not mine, I dont know who placed it and how.
Pledging continued support for Orbán, Szájer admitted ongoing strife between Hungary and the European Union had taken a toll on his mental health. “Those who are on the battlefield must be in a state of combat,” he said.
Along with Poland, Hungary has rejected E.U. efforts to address immigration and LGBTQ rights. In November, the two nations united to veto the E.U.’s trillion-euro budget and coronavirus recovery package because it is tied to member countries’ adherence to the rule of law and European values.
In a statement, Fideszs European Parliament delegation praised Szájers stepping down as the only right decision.
We acknowledge his decision, just as we acknowledge that he has apologized to his family, his political community and to the voters.
Szájers wife is Tunde Hando, a member of Hungarys Constitutional Court and the former director of the National Judiciary Office.
A founding member of Fidesz, Szájer was the head of the partys delegation to the European Parliament and served on its legal affairs committee. He also had a key role in drafting Hungarys controversial 2012 Constitution, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
While some reports have claimed he personally added that amendment, Hungarian gay activist Tamás Dombos said Szájer’s role in its addition is complicated.
Back in 2011, he stated publicly that he personally does not agree with the inclusion of a heterosexual definition of marriage in the Fundamental Law, although he did not leave the drafting committee when such a provision was finally included, Dombos told NBC News. That same year, Szájer was the only Fidesz politician who spoke out against the police for banning Budapest Pride, Dombos added. (The ban was eventually overturned.)
The Fidesz European Parliament delegation under his leadership voted significantly more progressively than did his fellow party members back in Hungary, Dombos said. It is true, however, that he did not speak up against growing homophobia and transphobia in recent months and years.
Szájers resignation comes as the Hungarian Parliament is considering a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex couples from adopting. Draft language submitted last month states that children must be raised in accordance with the values based on our homelands constitutional identity and Christian culture.
The basis for family relations is marriage, it states. The mother is a woman, the father is a man.
Under the amendment, expected to be voted on next week, only opposite-sex married couples would be eligible to adopt children, with rare exceptions made by the ministry of family affairs.
The amendment also asserts that the government protects childrens right to the gender identity they were born with.
The LGBTQ community has been a popular target for Fidesz, which has been in power since 2010. In May of this year, for example, the government reversed regulations allowing transgender and intersex citizens to change the gender listed on legal documents.
For the most part, Dombos said, opposition parties have focused on Szájers hypocrisy representing a traditional-values party while flouting lockdown and engaging in drugs and public sex rather than on the gay aspect of the scandal.
In a Facebook post, Hungarys centrist Momentum Movement party attacked him for thinking the rules didnt apply to him. But it said the incident was just another example of Fideszs total moral bankruptcy.
Last year, a video leaked of Zsolt Borkai, a Fidesz politician and former Olympic gymnast, participating in a orgy on a yacht in the Adriatic. At the time, Borkai was married and mayor of Gyr, a medium-sized city 70 miles outside Budapest.
Fidesz called the incident a private matter, according to Reuters, and Borkai won re-election shortly thereafter.
In July, former Hungarian ambassador Gábor Kaleta, a member of Fidesz, was given a one-year suspended sentence and $2,000 fine for possessing nearly 20,000 pornographic images of minors.
This is not the first time that the hypocrisy of Fidesz is revealed, the Momentum Movement said. Cocaine [use] from the party that wants to solve the drug problem with draconian strictness. Yachting with prostitutes from the party that talks about the sanctity of the family and the supremacy of Christian life. Participation in an illegal orgy under restrictions from a representative of the party that has done nothing to prepare the country for the second wave of the virus. These examples show that Fidesz doesn’t actually have Christian conservative values.
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