15 performances of Billy Elliot have been canceled by the Hungarian National Opera after a homophobic right-wing media campaign claiming that the award-winning Broadway musical turns boys gay.
AFP reports: ‘The musical had come under attack from the Magyar Idok newspaper, which supports right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In an article about the musical on June 1, the paper said “the propagation of homosexuality cannot be a national goal when the population is getting older and smaller and our country is threatened by invasion”. It went on to describe those involved in organising the musical with a homophobic slur, implying that they were seeking to turn young members of the audience into homosexuals.’
