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Hungary fines book shop for selling children’s book featuring LGBTQ characters

Hungarian officials have fined a bookshop chain for selling a children’s story showing LGBTQ characters.

Micsoda család! is a combo of two titles by US author Lawrence Schimel and illustrator Elīna Brasliņa: Early One Morning and Bedtime, Not Playtime!, translated into Hungarian.

One story follows a young boy’s morning routine with his two mothers, and Bedtime, Not Playtime!, shows a young girl who has two fathers, refusing to go to sleep.

Pest county fined the bookstore, Líra Könyv, 250,000 forints (£600) fine

County commissioner Richard Tarnai told the media that the store was in violation of commercial practices rules by failing to show clearly that the book contained “content which deviates from the norm”.

“The book was there among other fairytale books and thus committed a violation,” Tarnai said. “There is no way of knowing that this book is about a family that is different than a normal family.”

The author Lawrence Schimel complained that the Hungarian government is “trying to normalise hate and prejudice with these concerted attacks against books like mine … which represent for kids the plural and diverse world they live in.”

Schimel explained to the Guardian that the books are meant to “celebrate queer families, to put more queer joy into the world, so that the only books available to children weren’t about conflicts”.

“In these stories, the fact that the parents are two mums or two dads is incidental to the story, as it is to the daily lives of children in rainbow families,” he said. “These families don’t only experience homophobia, they also have fun.”

The Hungarian bookstore said that it would display a sign telling customers that they offered “books with different content than traditional ones”.

“Rainbow families are completely normal, ordinary families,” explained Hungarian distributor, Foundation for Rainbow Families, in a statement. “These families haven’t had their own story book so far. That’s why we thought it was important to publish a fairytale book about them – and first of all for them.”

The fine comes during a heavily criticised crackdown on LGBT rights in Hungary, from order of Viktor Orbán’s government.

The new law bans LGBT people from featuring in educational materials or TV shows for children under 18, and came into force on Thursday 8th July 2021.

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