Advertisements by Coca-Cola relating to a popular music festival in Hungary that promote gay acceptance have prompted a boycott call from a senior member of the conservative ruling party.
The posters are timed for the week-long Sziget festival – that takes the theme of “Love Revolution” and starts on Wednesday in Budapest – and show gay people and couples smiling with slogans such as “zero sugar, zero prejudice”.
That has annoyed some supporters of Viktor Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, which opposes same-sex marriage.
On Sunday, Fidesz’s deputy speaker István Boldog called for a boycott of Coca-Cola products during what he labelled a “provocative” campaign. But with gay acceptance rising among Hungarians, it was unclear if his call would gain traction.
Still, rightwing news portals echoed his antipathy. “The homosexual lobby is laying siege to Budapest, leaving no space to avoid this,” complained one, Pesti Srácok.
Orbán, who rails against immigrants, promotes ethnic homogeneity and claims he seeks to protect Europe’s Christian traditions, opposes equal rights for same-sex couples while advocating quiet gay-straight co-existence.
On Monday Coca-Cola said that the Sziget festival, expected to draw more than half a million people, echoes core principles of the US multinational. “We believe both hetero- and homosexuals have the right to love the person they want, the way they want,” the company said.
Fidesz stopped short of endorsing Boldog’s boycott call, saying Hungarians were free to choose whether to drink Coke.
Tamás Dombos, an advocate with the Háttér gay rights group, said the government was homophobic but also aware of society’s growing acceptance of gay lifestyles.
“We have a feeling they are testing people in this subject,” Dombos said. “The entire government propaganda is built on conflict, and they need enemies. After the EU, migrants, NGOs and even the homeless, now it may be LGBTQ people.
“Sometimes it’s hard to dissect whether it’s a political strategy or just an inherent real homophobe getting mad at something like Coke’s campaign.”
According to a 2018 Háttér study, nearly two-thirds of Hungarians believe gay people should be free to live as they please, up from less than half in 2002.
Gay rights have caused more of a stir in Poland, where ruling rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party, a Fidesz ally, has launched an anti-gay campaign in an apparent attempt to re-energise its mainly rural base. One conservative magazine distributed “LGBT-free zone” stickers and some towns have declared themselves “LGBT-free”.
In Hungary, the parliament speaker this year equated gay adoption to “paedophilia in a moral sense”.
Orbán has rarely addressed the issue head on, though in a 2016 interview he said gay people “can do what they want but cannot get their marriages recognised by the state… An apple cannot ask to be called a pear.”