Hungary’s largest bookseller has started wrapping children’s and young adult books that feature LGBTQ+ characters in plastic to prevent customers from opening them in stores after it was taken over by a private foundation with close ties to Viktor Orbán.
Libri, which is also the country’s largest publisher, said in an email that the packaging was a requirement from the Hungarian consumer protection authority to follow the controversial “child protection” law that came into force in 2021.
The bookstore chain is the first in Hungary to use the transparent packaging, though a few rural booksellers have started to follow the practice.
Two years ago, the government passed a widely criticised law banning LGBTQ+ people from featuring in educational material or on TV shows for children. The legislation prohibits the promotion and display of homosexuality and gender reassignment, though the definition of “promotion” is vague.
The law has also come under fire for conflating homosexuality with paedophilia. According to the interpretation of Háttér Society, a Hungarian organisation focused on LGBTQ+ rights, a parent could break the law solely by buying a child a young adult novel that features an LGBTQ+ character.
In 2021, another bookstore, Líra, had to pay a £600 fine for selling a children’s book by the American author Lawrence Schimel depicting a day in the life of a child with same-sex parents. The bookseller failed to indicate that this was a “family that is different from a normal family”, according to Hungarian officials.
After the government-funded Mathias Corvinus Collegium, an educational institution, bought Libri, sources in Hungarian publishing said the bookstore chain contacted several publishers to find out whether they believed their books complied with the requirements of the child protection law.
The state-run consumer protection authority recently fined Libri 1m forints (£2,280) for “improper display”. Libri claimed that the authority forced it not only to sell the books separately from others but do so in “closed packaging”.
Works affected by the use of plastic wrapping include Micol Ostow’s tie-in novels to the Netflix series Riverdale, and the British author Alice Oseman’s graphic novel Heartstopper.
Bence Rétvári, a government minister, criticised Heartstopper on Facebook, where he wrote: “In the book Heartstopper, you will find a comic of boys kissing. Parents don’t know if they are being provoked or if their child is being converted.”
Eszter Polgári, Háttér Society’s legal programme director, said: “The major downside is that these books will leave the shelves where they belong. They will not be placed in the youth section but the adult literature section, so the target audience will not even notice them.”
Ádám András Kanicsár, an LGBTQ+ journalist and activist, said: “The whole event also puts pressure on Hungarian activists. In Hungary, it is often the civilians who keep part of the culture alive and this is what has to happen now.”
In April, 15 EU member states joined a legal case against the anti-LGBTQ+ child protection law, which was described as a “disgrace” by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
• This article was amended on 29 August 2023 to clarify that Micol Ostow’s novels are “tie-ins” to the Netflix Riverdale series, which was based on a long-running series of comics.
