Viktor Orbán and his alchemists aim to have homosexuality vanish into thin air, as manifested in their latest plan to ban the promotion of homosexuality to children, but what if their anti-gay agenda is more rightly served not with less homosexuals in sight but more of them? What if Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party should, for their own good, introduce to their book clubs a few titles from gay and lesbian literature and some academic textbooks in queer theory?
Orbán dreams of a Hungarian society where homosexuality is invisible – but he forgets that to be invisible is to be fully transparent; ultra-visible; so that as the rule goes, when we see everything, we see nothing. Mr. Orbán ought to indeed come visit the bars in a few open cities, Amsterdam to Stockholm. He may notice how his pair of eyes are so unbothered surfing down Google Reviews – how uncommon there, to find a bar designating itself as gay-friendly. When a city is so overall gay-friendly, the bars need no longer to advertise themselves as such; homosexuality itself needs no longer to be visible.
Ironically, it takes a certain level of darkness for spooky shadows to be cast; and it is precisely the shadows of homosexuals that the Fidesz party is chasing. But be warned he who permits life to develop aside in a far-flung closet. We know all species have better chances to evolve on a remote island than in the jungle. Orbán’s policies ignore not the rules of politics, but of biology – for just as a plant shall find a way to adapt in the most arid and desolate of lands, and ultimately rise stronger than it ever was; so will the future generations of Hungary be as ardently affirming in the characteristics which have preconditioned their chances of survival; their sexuality included.
After Darwin, the members of the Fidesz party should do themselves a favour and read Freud. Banning the promotion of homosexuality to children – how absurd, from a psychoanalytical perspective. In 1905, Freud showed how infants behold their own bodies (therefore, their own sex) as their first love-object. For Freud, our homosexual libido predates a potential heterosexuality, which itself may not arise until the famed Oedipal rivalry begins. Indeed, if pressed for answers by Victor Orbán and his gang, Freud would have likely said: “By banning the promotion of homosexuality, you are promoting it. It would be easier to ban the promotion of heterosexuality; that might work.”
