Brussels Wednesday,
I stand in an alley in Brussels’ gay quarter and look at one of the large paintings that adorn one side of the passage. “I’m not gay! I just happen to have sexual relationships with men… ”says a hairy man with a big beard and rosy cheeks in front of a pink background on the painting.
He’s actually quite similar the EU politician whose career came to an abrupt end here in the alley just over a week ago.
It is a completely improbable story that contains a dramatic escape from the police, drugs, a gang bang and, as I said, an outgoing politician.
For my part, the story began with me receiving a text message from a source.
There was a link to a post from the Hungarian EU parliamentarian József Szájer – co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party and a close friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Just a few days earlier, he had resigned because he felt that the daily political struggle had become too heavy a burden and that he quoted “did not feel fit to fight on the battlefield”.
In the text he published two days later, which I received via text message, he gave another explanation.
He had done away with himself. Really. Went to a private party in violation of Belgium’s Corona restrictions. The police had knocked and found ecstacy in his bag.
In the text I received in the text message, Szájer assured that he was completely clean, the pills were not his and he had the cooperation with the police, although he also invoked his immunity as a parliamentarian.
However, it later turned out that this was not the whole truth either. In fact, he had tried to escape through a window and climbed down the alley via a downpipe, but he had been injured in the coup and the police had arrested him.
That he put his health at risk to flee was probably not because he wanted to avoid a fine of 250 euros, which can lead to a breach of the Corona Restrictions in Belgium. But rather on the character of the party. It was an intimate event, simply a sex party for men.
Who a politician meets and what he or she has in private is of course entirely up to him or her. But for Szájer, that meant the end of a long political career.
József Szájer was a heavyweight in a party that really emphasizes family-conservative ideals. In addition, Szájer himself was one of the masterminds behind Hungary’s new constitution, which now states that marriage is a union between man and woman.
This wording has later become the basis for subsequent additions which have gradually restricted the rights of LGBTQ people in Hungary. Where, for example, it has been decided that only heterosexual couples may adopt children and legal recognition of transgender people has been abolished.
What best describes the combination of Szájer’s political deeds and private life is probably hypocrisy. And there is, I think, an important lesson in this in history. A lesson for all politicians: to live as you learn. Or maybe learn as you live.
Source: ICELAND NEWS