“I started to think, ‘this might be OK,’” he told the AP, and said it’s alarming to imagine a young person deprived of the same opportunity because of Hungary’s TV restrictions. Netflix has declined to remove the program.Īs a gay youngster in a Pennsylvania steel mill town in the 1990s, McCarthy said he felt isolated and alone until he saw LGBTQ characters on TV, including Pedro Zamora on MTV’s “The Real World.” MTV’s pre-emptive outreach comes amid backlash by some Netflix staffers to the streaming service’s handling of a Dave Chappelle stand-up special, “The Closer,” which includes derogatory comments about trans people. “Instead, we should move forward, using the show as an opportunity to stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community in Hungary and around the world as we continue to fight for equality for all,” he said in the memo.
But after consulting within MTV and with LGBTQ advocates globally, including in Hungary, the decision “was very clear to us.” McCarthy said his immediate and personal reaction to the law, as a gay man, was to move the event to another country. “This may surprise anyone who knows that in June of this year, Hungary passed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation banning television content featuring gay people during the day and in primetime,” allowing it only to run overnight, McCarthy said in the memo.
MTV, which made a deal two years ago to hold the show in the nation’s capital, Budapest, planned to issue a lengthy memo to staffers in apparent anticipation of possible criticism of its decision. In 2020, Hungarian lawmakers approved legislation banning the legal recognition of transgender citizens. A majority of European Union leaders said it goes against the EU’s values and that discrimination must not be tolerated in the 27-nation bloc. Human rights groups strongly denounced the measure passed in June, saying it wrongly links gays with pedophilia and is intended as a a tool that could be used to stigmatize and harass residents because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
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