Czech President Milos Zeman, commenting on a Hungarian law that bans LGBT material from schools, told a television interview on Sunday that he finds transgender people “disgusting”.

Mr. Zeman then remarked that if he was younger, he would convene a giant demonstration of heterosexuals in Prague, which would allegedly be attended by millions of people.

“I can understand gays, lesbians, and so on. But do you know who I don’t understand at all? The transgender,” Zeman said. “If someone undergoes a sex-change operation, he commits a crime of self-harm. Every operation is a risk. And these transgender people are really disgusting to me,” he added.

Zeman commented made the comments in response to a question about a dispute in the EU over a controversial Hungarian law banning LGBTQ references in school materials. The law has already been condemned by 17 countries of the European Union, but the Czech Republic is still silent. According to Zeman, these countries “should not interfere in the affairs of Hungary”.

The letter doesn’t name Hungary explicitly, but the country is the clear target, after its parliament passed a bill that bans portrayals of homosexuality or of transgender people in content shown to minors.

“A member state makes laws that stigmatize a sexual minority and that mix up pedophilia and homosexuality — you can’t let that pass,” Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Bettel, one of the initiator of the letters, told Brussels Playbook in an interview. “For us heads of state and government, that is not acceptable.”

“Viktor Orbán says that he is not against homosexuals, but that he is against the manipulation not only of parents, but also of children in sex education,” Zeman said. “I see no reason to disagree with him, because I am completely annoyed by the suffragettes, the Me Too movement and Prague Pride.”

In 2019, President Zeman vowed to veto the bill on same-sex marriage, arguing that the purpose of marriage was for a family to bring up children. “A homosexual couple could never bring up children, and the state must therefore ensure to support heterosexual marriages.”

However, the president further stated that he has nothing against teaching sex education, including LGBT groups, but only in high school.

“We’re talking about elementary school kids here. The children can’t even really understand these topics,” Zeman added.