Hungary’s parliament has passed an amendment to the constitution that allows the government to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities, a decision that legal scholars and critics are calling another step toward authoritarianism, writes Euronews.

The amendment, which required a two-thirds vote, passed along party lines with 140 votes for and 21 against. The new amendment also states that the constitution recognizes two sexes, male and female, an expansion of an earlier amendment that prohibits same-sex adoption by stating that a mother is a woman and a father is a man.

The declaration provides a constitutional basis for denying the gender identities of transgender people, as well as ignoring the existence of intersex individuals who are born with sexual characteristics that do not align with binary conceptions of male and female.

In a statement on Monday, government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács wrote that the change is “not an attack on individual self-expression, but a clarification that legal norms are based on biological reality”. Lawyer Dánel Döbrentey said it was “a clear message” for transgender and intersex people: “It is definitely and purely and strictly about humiliating people and excluding them, not just from the national community, but even from the community of human beings”.