In 1950, a new criminal law is passed, reducing the penalty rates for same-sex intercourse, but retaining its general criminality. It was expected that Communists would repeal this paragraph since they have supported the idea of decriminalising homosexuality during the interwar period.
In Hungary, homosexuality is perceived not only as a crime against
morality, but also as a crime against the socialist establishment. This
suggests that the solutions chosen by Communists at this time in both
Czechoslovakia and Hungary were inspired by the approach toward
homosexuality in the Stalinist Soviet Union.
At the end of the 1950s, activists advocated for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In Hungary, the medical and neurological authorities made a significant contribution toward the process of decriminalisation. In Czechoslovakia, the sexologists supported the proposal to decriminalise homosexuality and prepared an expert paper for the legal commission that decided to decriminalise it. In 1961, homosexuality was decriminalised in both countries, although the process was still not complete.
Prejudice and exclusion of otherness were still palpable in the
collective consciousness, and even after 1961, people often did not
reflect that homosexuality was no longer a criminal offense. Homosexuals
have often led two parallel lives - a conforming one (for many in
heterosexual marriages) and a secret one, in which they fulfilled their
needs in secret relationships and in anonymous, often indecent places.
It was still possible to blackmail these people and get them to
cooperate with the state police.
The majority of the population still learns about homosexuality from news reports that mostly evoke feelings of outrage and resentment. For the most part, these stories concern homosexual men, depicting them as a danger to "traditional" gender relations. We know much less about the lives, desires and loves of female couples. What is even more unique is that the first "minority" film in Eastern Europe showed the love of two women rather than that of two men. The film provoked a huge public debate, with some women even marking their advertisements in dating sections with the code "egymásra nézve" so that other women could easily identify their potential loves or friends.