Table Of ContentPALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN
FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE
Queer Families
in Hungary
Same-Sex Couples,
Families of Origin,
and Kinship
Rita Béres-Deák
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life
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Rita Béres-Deák
Queer Families
in Hungary
Same-Sex Couples, Families of Origin,
and Kinship
Rita Béres-Deák
Budapest, Hungary
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
ISBN 978-3-030-16318-1 ISBN 978-3-030-16319-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16319-8
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Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to all the people from the Hungarian LGBTQ
community and their families who have shared with me stories and in
some cases events from their lives. This book would not have come to
life without you, and I am trying to do my best to give you voice and
provide increased visibility for stories like yours.
This book is based on my Ph.D. research at the Gender Studies
Department of the Central European University, Budapest. I am grate-
ful to CEU for making it possible and also for being a beacon of hope
for researchers and academic freedom in my country.
It would take too long to list here all the scholars who have influ-
enced me; their names will appear on the following pages often enough.
I must, however, mention some who have given me important feed-
back on my work, including (but not limited to) Hadley Z. Renkin,
Ellen Lewin, Éva Fodor, Dóri Rédai, Ráhel Kati Turai, Roman Kuhar,
and Judit Takács. I am indebted to Amelia Derkatsch from Palgrave
Macmillan for considering this book worth publishing and for helping
me along with this process.
For information on the legal background, I am indebted to Tamás
Dombos, one of the few legal experts I know who can actually speak
v
vi Acknowledgements
in a way intelligible to ordinary humans. Csilla Faix-Prukner and
Krisztián Rózsa, family therapists and leaders of the Rainbow Families
Foundation, have provided me with valuable sites for fieldwork, as well
as psychological literature and friendship.
From the beginning of research to writing this book has been more
than a decade. Over this time, what sustained me was partly my friends
at Háttér, in sz<3ft, at VándorMások, and our very secret Facebook
group of cat-loving feminists. You guys deserve all the virtual hugs and
cats in the world! I am grateful to my parents for being much nicer and
more flexible than many described on the following pages. Last but not
least, I want to thank my own queer family: a human and a cat, András
and Kristóf. Without their unrelenting love, you would not be reading
these words now—and yet words do not suffice to express what I feel
for them.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Family in (Post)Socialist Hungary 55
3 Approaches to Kinship in the Hungarian LGBTQ
Community 93
4 Visibility 139
5 Queer Families Performing Kinship 185
6 Family Members Becoming Allies 227
7 Beyond the Heterosexual Family Myth, or How
to Queer the Family 263
Index 287
vii
1
Introduction
A: Recently they [my gay cousin and his boyfriend] had a kind of
wedding. Where they strengthened their commitment. We were out on
Margaret Island,1 there were some hundred of us. […] They asked a
friend to give a speech, kinda substitute the priest, to speak about them
and their relationship as he knows them. And then I don’t know, we let
up these lighted balloons into the sky, we almost set fire on some trees.
BDR: Oh, so you mean there were candles lit inside these balloons?
A: Yes, kinda like that. It has some name too, but they’re no longer
[used], now they’re banned. Besides [laughs], it was so soon after the
wedding that they got banned that…
BDR: You mean perhaps this was the reason?
A: Maybe, yes, because really we sent up I don’t know how many into the
sky. […] And it was really scary to see how this thing was nearing the
leaves of the trees. So it was really scary. But we didn’t set fire on any-
thing. (Anikó, interview)
This short account of a gay commitment ceremony in many
ways symbolizes for me several themes that I encountered during
1An island on the river Danube in the center of Budapest, a popular public park.
© The Author(s) 2020 1
R. Béres-Deák, Queer Families in Hungary, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16319-8_1
2 R. Béres-Deák
my research. Though same-sex couples are not allowed to marry in
Hungary, Anikó calls the ceremony a wedding, a foundational ritual of
kinship, which is also ‘a major site for the installation and maintenance
of the institution of heterosexuality’ (Ingraham 2006: 197); by celebrat-
ing the commitment of a same-sex couple as a wedding, participants
subverted dominant understandings of the ritual and carved out a space
for the same-sex couple in a country which constitutionally limits the
scope of marriage to heterosexual couples. While celebrating a private
commitment, the ritual took place in a public space literally in the heart
of the capital, an illustration of how same-sex commitment ceremonies
bridge the gap between public and private (Lewin 1998). Another con-
nection to the public sphere is the fact that the balloons were banned
soon afterward (whether or not as a result of this ceremony), which is
another way the law restricts practices related to kinship. The presence
of Anikó and other heterosexuals at the ceremony connects the LGBTQ
community with the family of origin and shows that heterosexual kin
actively participate in extending (as well as limiting) the possibilities of
same-sex couples.
Same-sex commitment ceremonies are seen as the classic exam-
ple where the family of origin is often (though sometimes reluctantly)
involved in claiming equality for LGBTQ people (Glass 2014; Lewin
1998). Most of the stories discussed in this book, however, describe
much more ordinary events: visiting relatives, catsitting, or helping
with the dishes after a family dinner. If we regard kinship as perform-
ative (Butler 2000; Sahlins 2013), the practices of families of origin
with regard to same-sex couples tell us more about their attitudes than
focus group research exploring their opinions (like Cappellato and
Manganella 2014). As we will see, non-heterosexuals2 themselves
deduce their family’s attitude toward their sexual orientation more
from what they do than from what they say (if indeed they say any-
thing at all). At the same time, I also acknowledge discourses as an
important site of performing and claiming inclusion and exclusion.
2See more on the choice of terminology at the end of this chapter.
