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Politico (25 June 2021)

BY LILI BAYER, DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND JACOPO BARIGAZZI

Leaders from around the EU confronted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán over anti-LGBTQ+ measures on Thursday in an extraordinary clash reflecting rising tension over the bloc’s core values.

In a heated debate around the European Council table in Brussels, leaders spoke in unusually personal and emotional terms. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte suggested Orbán should leave the EU while Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel spoke of his own struggles to be accepted as a gay man.

“I did not become gay. I am, it is not a choice,” Bettel told the conservative Hungarian leader, according to officials who monitored the discussion. “My mother hates that I am gay, I live with that. And now you put this in a law. I respect you, but this is a red line. It is about basic rights, the right to be different.”

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