C-Fam President Austin Ruse Asks Hungary to Stop EU Sexual Rights Activism at the UN

By | June 29, 2023

BUDAPEST, June 30 (C-Fam) Austin Ruse addressed the Danube Institute this week in Budapest on the question of Hungarian positions on the moral issues of the UN.

“Poland and Hungary’s positions on the moral issues at the United Nations are indistinguishable from Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the other 23 countries in the European Union, including on abortion and gender ideology,” Ruse said in his address, giving examples of UN negotiations where Hungary took position alongside sexually progressive countries.

The President of C-Fam urged Hungarians to do more to stop EU activism on abortion and homosexual/trans issues.

Hungary supports language about “sexual and reproductive health” used by UN agencies to promote an international right to abortion and the homosexual/trans agenda as well as language on “sexual orientation and gender identity” as categories of non-discrimination prohibited under international law, Ruse said.

Hungary also supports the notion of “comprehensive sexuality education” which teaches children about homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexual autonomy, as well as the notion that “the State, and not the family, has the primary responsibility to protect children,” he added.

Not only does Hungary join EU positions on these issues, Ruse emphasized, Hungarian diplomats do not “effectively clarify” their positions on these subjects and they oppose language affirming national sovereignty in the context of social policy debates.

Ruse said this was problematic because UN resolutions are not without consequence.

“Non-binding UN resolution may seem harmless,” he explained, but they are being used to impose new UN human rights through customary international law and UN agencies use them as a “mandate to promote abortion, homosexual/trans issues, and the entire leftwing agenda on social issues.”

Ruse also pointed to several non-binding UN agreements and policies are being implemented across the world by government bureaucracies, regardless of their legal status, including the Paris Agreement, COVID-19 policies, and gender agreements.

Orban’s government has spent a “great deal of time and treasure to court conservatives and to project a pro-family and pro-Christian image abroad,” Ruse said in his address. This investment has had its desired effect. “Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic look to Poland and Hungary with great hope,” he said.

“While Hungary’s family laws at home may be trending in a conservative direction, the Hungarian government continues to align with the European Union in social policy debates,” he said.

Ruse called this an “existential threat to the sovereignty of nation states that make up the European Union” because “by adopting a common EU foreign policy in every international forum, European nations are effectively abdicating their sovereignty.”

He urged Hungary to “insist on formal limits to EU power” in the same way that they do on the issue of migration. “Social conservatives should expect no less when it comes to life and family issues and gender ideology,” he said.

Hungary must “first block EU consensus on social policy to prevent the EU from adopting radical social positions”, Ruse suggested, and then also “disrupt sexually leftist EU diplomacy.”

Ruse said there was hope this could be achieved. Hungary recently clashed with the EU on how to define gender in a negotiation for a treaty on crimes against humanity.

“The leading conservative governments of the Western hemisphere should get into the habit of breaking the EU consensus on foreign policy more often,” Ruse concluded.