The war over benches painted in rainbow colors is not subsiding in Hungary. A few rainbow benches were recently repainted in the town of Kecskemet, central Hungary, and rightly so. The Left's great theorists, such as Gyorgy Balvany, columnist of 24.hu and other renowned journalists did not remain silent, doing their best to convince us that the rainbow bench and the rainbow flag represent solidarity, acceptance and such values. They further explain that those who repaint the bench and throw the flag in the bin are plagued by homophobia and who knows what other phobia.
This latter assumption may even be true. However, these counteractions can win the approval of many right-wing people in this country even though they/we do not suffer from prejudices. For the rainbow flag no longer represents for us the sublime values of the left-wing journalists, but has become a symbol of an ideology that is out of touch with reality, sick, exclusionary and aggressive.
Personally, I don't care if a man dresses as a woman, but I've grown tired of the supporters and experts of the LGBTQ movement denying that there is a sexual motivation behind it. A transgender person writhing, dancing and possibly singing on stage as a so-called drag queen wants to appeal to the audience in a sexual sense (too). It is therefore a problem that the trans community actively seeks to involve children in activities that may seem like fun, an opportunity to perform or appear on stage, but these activities are sexually charged. This is why it is problematic that that The New York Times celebrates "drag kids", or that drag queens read stories in kindergartens, and LGBTQ-themed summer camps are organized in North America. Of course, LGBTQ advocates can once again easily brush off the issue saying that America is far away, but due to globalization, these phenomena have come to be spreading at the speed of light compared to previous decades. LGBTQ storybooks have been available in Hungarian for years, and if no legal regulations were in place, they would certainly have been presented in some kindergartens.
Another important set of problems is also related to this topic: in the spirit of rainbow gender ideology, gender reassignment clinics have proliferated in the last two decades all over the world - especially in the West. These clinics push Adolescents dissatisfied with their bodies or those diagnosed with gender dysphoria are massively pushed by these clinics towards gender reassignment surgery. The Left likes to sidetrack the debate by talking about the non-existent phenomenon of "gender affirming surgery on toddlers", but the fact is that several cases have been registered of children aged 12 to 13 being mutilated in these clinics.
We are not talking about a "minor" hormone treatment. Take the case of Chloe Cole, who had both her healthy breasts removed at the age of 13 by doctors blinded by LGBTQ ideology. By the time she was of age, she had filed a lawsuit against them. Some of the patients treated in the gender reassignment clinics will be happy with their new identities, of course, but a very significant number will suffer irreparable physical and psychological damage. There are many examples of this, perhaps the most infamous being the British Tavistock Clinic, which is facing hundreds and thousands of lawsuits from young patients who were mutilated in the name of rainbow ideology.
Yet another very serious problem is that many of the LGBTQ movement's high-profile theorists, such as Gayle S. Rubin, Judith Butler or Patrick Califia, consider alarming phenomena like pedophilia or incest to be acceptable or supportable. Does it imply that LGBTQ people are pedophiles? Clearly not. Just don't be surprised if someone reacts angrily to their symbol because of the underlying ideas.
The rainbow movement has now merged with many other liberal progressive movements, such as Black Lives Matter (BLM). It is hard to find a BLM or Rainbow march in the United States that does not feature the flags of both movements at the same time. BLM's purported goal is to improve the situation of people of colour in general and to fight for their rights.
By contrast, the movement has chosen George Floyd as their "hero", a victim of police violence. The man was arrested nine times in his life and spent a total of eight years and eight months in prison for theft, burglary and drug-related offences. Today there statues in public spaces honouring him. Leaders of the BLM movement have become millionaires in recent years, while unleashing anger within the North American people of colour, whose plight has not improved to any extent. One of BLM's goals would be to curb the prejudice-based phenomenon of judging someone based on the colour of their skin rather than on their merits. By comparison, the movement is trying - apparently successfully - to stigmatise white people, whose skin colour is slowly becoming synonymous with evil in the public discourse.
The rainbow flag is now conflated with the woke movement and cancel culture. Anyone who writes an article like this in Western Europe and North America can expect stigmatisation, annihilation of his professional and private life and death threats.
In addition to all this, we could go into detail about a host of perverse phenomena such as: the self-legitimation of pronouns in the Western world, the abolition of the culture of debate in universities in the name of gender ideology, the propagation of a victim culture, the marginalising and labelling of professors and academics as "fascist" for pointing out problems, or the teaching of LGBTQ ideology in schools, in some cases without the parents' knowledge, and other alarming things.
Finally, this whirlwind sweeping through Western society has been embraced by the political elite and the profit-driven corporate giants, none of which are known for their people-centredness. So why? From here in Hungary, it seems that so long as the majority of ordinary citizens are now preoccupied with who they think is not respecting their "rights", or who is not conforming to their preferred pronouns, or who is not respectful of their self-identifying as a street lamp and lumensexual, then that majority will not be concerned about rising rents, inflation, or which of the quick profit-focused banks or multinationals are receiving incomprehensible amounts of money in the form of "state bailouts".
Today, far from being a symbol of the LGBTQ community's fight against phobias and hatred, the rainbow flag has become a hurricane that is upending the world as we know and accept it, forcing us all to step by step abide by alternative rules that in previous centuries would have appeared in a dystopian pamphlet at best. (See: the Loretta scene in Monty Python's classic "Life of Brian".) That is why many of us say "No thank you" to the rainbow symbol. If someone wants to display it on their balcony or their T-shirt, let them. Freedom of expression is a value. But this symbol has no place on public buildings or benches.
Cover photo: Rainbow-coloured bench (Source: Facebook)
