CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR MILO Yiannopouolos has found himself at the centre of another storm of controversy due to his comments about relationships between “young boys” and men.
He made the comments in an online livestream.
Yiannopoulos, who works for the alt-right site Breitbart, had been banned from Twitter last summer over his role in the online abuse of Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the film Ghostbusters.
This latest video came after it emerged that Yiannopoulos was due to give a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). While he has escaped heavy criticism from some of the conservative quarters over his inflammatory comments in the past, this time Yiannopoulos’s language saw him fall foul of the organisers of the conference.
He has now been pulled as a speaker. Among those speaking at this year’s CPAC event is President Donald Trump.
In a Facebook post, titled ‘A note for idiots’, Yiannopoulos said he does not support paedophilia, which is “a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the worst”.
He said that there are “selectively edited videos doing the rounds, as part of a coordinated effort to discredit me from establishment Republicans, that suggest I am soft on the subject”.
He said that if it comes across through his “own sloppy phrasing or through deceptive editing” that he “meant any of the ugly things alleged”, he wanted to set the record straight: “I am completely disgusted by the abuse of children”.
I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home. That’s perfectly true and every gay man knows it. But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys.
I shouldn’t have used the word “boy” when I talked about those relationships between older men and younger gay men. (I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the UK is 16.) That was a mistake. Gay men often use the word “boy” when they refer to consenting adults. I understand that heterosexual people might not know that, so it was a sloppy choice of words that I regret.
In another post, he said that he is a child abuse victim and that his “own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous”.
Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union, which runs the CPAC event, had said at the weekend that CPAC thinks free speech includes “hearing Milo’s important perspective”.
But this evening, the ACU said that it has rescinded Yiannopoulos’s invitation to the conference due to the comments in the new video.
Schlapp described Yiannopoulos’s explanation on Facebook as “insufficient”.
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