By ANDREW HIGGINS NYTimes News Service
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Emboldened by President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary on Monday escalated his culture war against what he calls “gender madness,” after his governing party voted to amend the constitution to mandate that all Hungarians are either male or female.

The amendment proposed by the government was endorsed by parliament, where the prime minister’s Fidesz party has a large majority. It was the latest in a series of moves by Orban to rev up his conservative base and distract attention from economic problems and a surging opposition movement ahead of elections next year.

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“The international gender network must take its hands off our children,” Orban said Monday. “Now, with the change in America, the winds have shifted in our favor,” he added, referring to the reelection of Donald Trump as president.

The amendment on gender included a clause that enshrined the protection of children’s “physical, mental and moral development,” reinforcing a law passed last month that banned gay pride events as a danger to the welfare of the very young.

The legislature also changed the constitution to allow the government to strip dual nationals of their Hungarian citizenship if they are deemed dangerous to the nation. Some of Orban’s most vocal critics are Hungarians who fled abroad and took a second citizenship in another country.

The changes were part of what Orban said last month would be a “spring cleaning” to cleanse Hungarian politics of “stink bugs.”

The amendments mark the 15th time that Hungary has revised its constitution since Orban became prime minister in 2010 and set about transforming his country into a self-declared “illiberal democracy.”

Liberal critics have denounced the changes as a retreat from democracy and an assault on the core values of the European Union, of which Hungary has been a member since 2004. Orban’s supporters, who include Trump and many prominent U.S. Republicans, however, see Hungary as a model of successful conservative politics in action.

Orban has won four general elections in a row, ramping up culture war issues ahead of each ballot. A year before the last election, in 2022, his party pushed legislation through parliament that outlawed the “popularizing” of homosexuality, as well as content that promoted a gender that diverged from the one assigned at birth. Fidesz won a landslide after demonizing its opponents as “woke globalists” and “warmongers” intent on sending Hungarian youth to fight Russia in Ukraine.

The party’s credentials as a protector of children, however, were dented badly early last year, after it became known that the justice minister, Judit Varga, a leading Fidesz politician, had lobbied to pardon a man convicted of covering up pedophilia in a state-run children’s home. The minister and two other prominent Fidesz figures, including Hungary’s president, Katalin Novak, resigned amid a public uproar over the pardon.

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