Compromising Priests and Nuns Under State Socialism: Encountering Homosexuality in Hungarian State Security Records

This article is based on the results of archival research in 20^th century Hungary concerning the practices and consequences of state policing of homosexuality under state socialism. Two cases will be examined in detail. One is related to the court case of a Catholic priest caught performing homosexual acts, whose testimonies were intended to be used by the secret services to compromise other members of the clergy. The other case is special because it is connected to female homosexuality, which was rarely thematized in this period. Its main characters are a former Dominican nun and a group of young religious women organized by her. The Secret Police tried to dissolve the group by sending anonymous letters to the parents of the young women, accusing the leader of the group of homosexuality. By foregrounding institutionalized homophobia as a strategic tool of governance under Hungarian state socialism, the presented cases demonstrate how sexual deviance was deliberately weaponized to achieve broader political objectives, including the suppression of autonomous religious communities and the manipulation of church-state relations.