Orbán: ‘Liberals must respect right of non-liberals to hold EU together’

He said the debate was “eerily similar” to the one that broke out in June 2015 over the “migrant invasion of Europe”.

“Both were morally difficult, politically important and intellectually beautiful debates. In both cases, the answer is the same: there is no unity of values and therefore no political unity either,” Orbán said.

He said that in both cases, “the Liberals started from the premise that these were issues to which there was only one answer, one in line with the Liberal hegemony of opinion.” Non-liberal democrats, on the other hand, said “there are different answers … and that only an approach of ‘unity in diversity’ can hold the European Union together,” Orbán said.

“Liberals believe that everyone has the right to migrate and to enter the territory of the European Union, even if it is not directly from a dangerous country but through a safe third country. The right to migrate, they say, is essentially a human right.”

Regarding “the current debate” on sexual education in schools, Orbán said “liberals state that children should be given awareness-raising publications that can educate them about heterosexuality, homosexuality, leaving the biological sex and sex-change operations and this is their human right. In their view children can be educated about those issues without parental consent and without state restrictions.”

Non-liberal democrats, however, see the sexual education of children as the right of the parent, and “without their consent, neither the state, nor political parties, NGOs, or rainbow activists can play a role,” the prime minister said.

Orbán said that today “rainbow countries have the right to move beyond the binary social arrangement based on man-woman and mother-father relations”. “They used to be like that, but deliberately and by elevating their intentions to the level of state policy, they have moved to another dimension,” he said.

“Whether it is better to live in a binary or a rainbow world and why is a question on which both sides argue their own opinion. Everyone has one’s own truth,” Orbán said.

“But from the point of view of law, international law, EU law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the right position is beyond doubt. Migration is not a human right, and how a child is brought up sexually is not a child’s human right. There is no such human right. Instead, there is Article 14 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights on the right of parents to ensure that their child is provided with an appropriate upbringing. If we want to keep the European Union together, liberals must respect the rights of non-liberals. Unity in diversity. That is the future,” the prime minister said.