Weeks before an anticipated showdown at Budapest’s newly outlawed Pride celebration on June 28, Hungary’s authoritarian government received a scathing rebuke from the European Court of Justice on another front in its anti-LGBTQ+ crusade.

The court’s advocate general said a law passed by Prime Minister Victor Orbán’s Fidesz party in 2021 banning LGBTQ+ content from schools and television was in clear violation of basic human rights and freedom of expression under the EU treaty and charter of fundamental rights, the Guardian reports.

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Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta issued the opinion on Thursday, urging the EU court to rule against Hungary. It dismantled the Hungarian government’s arguments defending its so-called “child protection” legislation.

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Like Russia’s ever-widening “gay propaganda” laws, the ban dictates that gay and transgender people or themes can’t be featured in school educational materials, or in any TV show, film, or advertisement shown before 10 p.m. on television in Hungary.

The law presents “a prejudice that homosexual and non-cisgender life is not of equal value or status as heterosexual and cisgender life,” Ćapeta wrote, and was based on a value judgment rather than any scientific proof.

Far from protecting children from harm, she said, the discriminatory law “expands such harm.”

“The stigmatizing effects of the Hungarian legislation, which creates a climate of hostility towards LGBTI persons, may affect the feelings of identity, self-esteem, and self-confidence of LGBTI persons,” she wrote in the 69-page opinion.

“Minors who belong to the LGBTI community are especially affected, as the removal of information about LGBTI lives from the public sphere prevents them from realizing that their life is not abnormal.”

“It also affects their acceptance by their peers, in school or other environments, and thus affects their right to a ‘private social life’ as well. Therefore, rather than protecting minors from harm, the contested legislation expands such harm.”

The opinion is nonbinding, but the European court follows the advocate general’s guidance in most cases.

The European Commission started legal action against Hungary in 2021 after the law was passed. The legislation included both the ban on LGBTQ+ content and provisions targeting child abusers, conflating the unrelated issues in a bid to further stigmatize LGBTQ+ identity and buttress Orbán’s argument that LGBTQ+ people are a symptom of Western “degeneracy.”

In April, Fidesz passed a constitutional amendment through Parliament to codify a ban on Pride celebrations across Hungary and enable the government to use facial recognition technology to track attendees.

LGBTQ+ Hungarians, allies, and members of the European Parliament have vowed to defy the ban and assemble in Budapest and other cities to protest Orbán’s totalitarian, anti-LGBTQ+ crusade.

The advocate general’s opinion follows the release of a signed letter from a group of 20 European member nations condemning Hungary’s Pride ban. The signatories called on the European Commission to “expeditiously make full use of the rule of law toolbox at its disposal” if the law isn’t overturned.

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