When Deep Love Takes Action
SATURDAY, JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTHONE THIRTY-TWO P.M. Budapest Pride March is about to begin. There’s a rumour that Orbán’s only son, Gáspár, is gay. A man is holding up a homemade sign attached to a long stick framed with a rainbow flag at the top. It says: “I'm here for Gáspár.”
Text and photos © Gry Ellebjerg
It’s 28 degrees Celsius outside. Inside my body, it’s 38.4. I wash down two paracetamol and get ready, camera in one hand, water bottle in the other. The world’s press moves like a shoal of fish through the crowd, attacking the same prey: mostly men who stand out, either through their clothing or with political signs. A friend says she has seen the police installing cameras with "facial recognition technology" around the city all week leading up to Pride. To my surprise I see no uniforms.
Four Nazi demonstrations have been announced. I can’t get over the absurdity of Nazis being allowed to speak in public, while a Pride parade is forbidden. I have seen several golden plaques bearing witness to the “Border of the Pest Ghetto 1944”. Just a few metres from my studio there is one in the pavement: ”Here lived Ilona Harmat, born 1921. To escape Nazi persecution and impending deportation to the death camps, she took her own life on April 19, 1944.” The date places her death directly after the Nazi occupation of Hungary and immediately before the mass deportations to Auschwitz.
In a circle of photographers and journalists, two Christian preachers are getting attention. One is carrying a large cross shouting: “We are here to warn you about your wicked ways. We are here to warn you about your sin. Most people here are not using a sound mind. You are confused.” They are asked by the organisers to leave, but refuse, claiming their right to be there.
At the very front, a white flatbed truck carries a DJ. From the speakers, Aretha Franklin is singing:
“I've got a strong will to survive
I've got a deeper love
Deeper love
A deeper love inside
And I call it pride”
Everyone I speak to before the march feels a sense of unease, a fear, something restlessly indefinable but also excitement about taking action. What are they risking? Orbán has threatened participants with fines up to 500 Euros and the organisers with prison sentences up to a year. “Let it cost what it may,” as one of them put it. I am walking at the head of the march. I'm nervous. What if my fever gets worse? I know how incredibly wrong things could go if I were arrested. What if the police take me and I lose my phone and my camera?
For me it’s personal. Today Pride is illegal in Hungary. Tomorrow, will it be me? I don’t have millions of followers on Instagram. I don’t have a media house or a political party behind me. I am just a lesbian from Sweden.
In a post on Instagram, Greta Thunberg explains the political situation in Hungary sounding like a schoolmistress. I love that she is here but she provokes me. I see no fear in her face as she preaches straight into her iPhone. It’s like she has an on and off button. I recognise that same pattern in the social media posts from politicians in the European Parliament. I can't help wondering if it's just another day at the office?
After half an hour, the march comes to a halt. I ask the police why. No answer. No eye contact. Someone tells me a Nazi counter-demonstration is blocking the street ahead. We have to re-route. A woman dressed in rainbow colours is walking back and forth in front of the wall of police. The photographers move like a shoal of fish around her.
Cut to a Few Days Before
One of the few things I knew about Budapest was that Ingrid Bergman’s lover, Robert Capa, was born here. I had always been impressed by his pictures. Especially the one of Ingrid Bergman sitting in a bathtub in a bombed-out Berlin. The picture was supposedly destroyed in the developing bath, perhaps a prophecy of Bergman’s Italian neorealism. I had come to Budapest because Orbán and his friends had started a war against the LGBTQ+ family. Capa was a war photographer. That is where the similarities between Capa and me end. Apart from our shared love for Ingrid Bergman.
I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t kindness. A woman asked where I was from. Sweden, I said, and told her I was here for Budapest Pride. Kindly and politely, she steered the conversation to the weather. Another woman gave me a broader perspective of why the march is vital for Hungary, for Europe: "As I see it, Europe is divided into East and West. The war in Ukraine is like an ideological gateway. One road leads to Russia, defined by homophobia; the other to Western Europe, guarded by human rights. In the middle of it all, the queers are used as a symbol for freedom or as a scapegoat."
Some days the temperature reached 35 degrees Celsius. As I walked around I realised what was missing. The flag. The LGBTQ+ flag. Gone. Non-existent. This is what it must have been like in Sweden when I was growing up. Ironic, it was only when it was missing that I understood its absolute value. Queers may be a minority, but our PR methods have been a success. Our flag is no longer just about the right of LGBTQ+ people to express our versions of humanity. We play a major role on the global stage as a symbol for everybody's right to express who they are. God knows what will happen if our bodies refuse to be controlled.
An early morning I was having breakfast with a dancer who has lived in Budapest for a number of years. Over bites of a croissant washed down with cappuccino, she offers an interesting analysis of why power is threatened by people’s sexuality:
"I came across some French philosophers who understood that sexuality is connected to expression and self-knowledge. These ideas go against the fascist way. If you are okay with whatever you feel and wish, and you are conscious about your desires... then you say, 'I am not going to go against myself. I am here with whatever I am.'
This is a threat to the system in Hungary. Politically, the system is dependent on individual self-oppression. That people question themselves all the time, feeling small and like they don't have a choice or a voice. They become just someone who suffers. A victim. Us doing the walk on Saturday is a big thing. We are finally waking up."
What she is describing is how a power structure places bombs inside people, turning them into their own worst enemy. No one can sue the state for something its inhabitants do to themselves. I recognise the phenomenon from my own upbringing. That is also why I know that the process can be broken.
Cut Back to the Pride March
After two-hours, we finally reached Elisabeth Bridge. As we crossed the narrowest part of the Danube, the music was replaced by occasional bursts of applause. I managed to make my way to the front. The media had positioned themselves perhaps five metres in front of the large banner. I identified one of the men in the middle.
It was the mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony. A father of two. Married to a woman. He actively supported Budapest Pride, trying to make the parade legal. When that failed, only civil disobedience was left. But this day is not about the politicians. As I see it, they are just adding another medal to their CV. If the mayor is risking anything in his own country, I am sure he already has an office waiting for him in Brussels.
During my days in Budapest, I was told several times that Hungarians are not used to protesting. It’s not in their nature, they explained. Perhaps that is why what moved me the most in the Pride march was the man dressed in Lidl clothes. It was the elderly couple who held each other’s hands. It was the heterosexual woman participating in her first Pride. It was the man walking for everyone's right to assemble. It was the dancer who walked even though she was afraid. “I’ll take the fine. It’s worth it.”
In the chaos at the front, a man with rainbow feathers dances through the crowd like a parrot. Earlier, he had posed with his rainbow-coloured fans, which read "basic bitch". Participating in the Budapest Pride March is a detour on the Pink Road and my search for lesbians. This march is about our right to exist as a collective on the streets. As I look around it is hard to know who is who. The majority consists of heterosexual supporters and gay men. My Hungarian lesbian friends confirm the same. The question "where are the lesbians" never seems to go away.
As I had crossed the bridge the paracetamol was no longer working. It was time for me to leave. On the way back, I came to the parade’s starting point. There were still people walking. Different figures have circulated in the media about the number of participants. Normally, 35,000 turn up. Today, there were more than 200,000 of us. Never have so many people taken part in a Pride parade in Budapest. The day after, I ask the dancer how she was.
”I’m shocked that all these people can gather. It means that this many people are okay with us being homosexual. If that’s true, it totally changes the narrative of the government. It means that Hungary, or at least Budapest, is not homophobic.”
A few days later, in the queue for the flight to Copenhagen, I'm talking to a woman from Budapest who lives in Sweden. I ask her about the rumour concerning Orbán’s only son. I don’t remember what she answered. I only know she is the first person I have a conversation with who doesn’t think Orbán does everything wrong.
“I feel safer in Budapest than I do in Malmö,” she said, referring to Sweden’s refugee policy.
She had been married to a gay man and had friends in both camps. She didn’t think it’s right to ban Pride, but at the same time, she echoed the pro-government propaganda: that homosexuals live out their sexuality in a shameless manner, that it is inappropriate for children to see. Had she witnessed this herself? No, it was just something she had read.
Should I have had more conversations with team Orbán? Perhaps the story was more complex than I wanted to admit. Yet again, I am not sure it's my job. As a lesbian I need my oxygen to exist. How much of that do I want to give away?
Shortly after the march, Orbán announced that he would not be issuing any fines or prison sentences. We could all relax. For this time.
