Right-wing commentator and Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos will hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon after controversial comments surfaced on social media, causing backlash from critics and supporters alike. Audio from a 2016 episode of “The Drunken Peasants” podcast, in which Yiannopoulos, 32, was heard discussing the age of consent for sexual relationships, led many to say he was condoning pedophilia.
In the clip, the openly gay British journalist was asked about “the whole consent thing.”
“It’s not this black and white thing that people try to paint it,” the interviewer said. “Are there some 13-year-olds out there capable of giving informed consent to have sex with an adult? Probably…”
Yiannopoulos responded to the inquiry by asserting “the law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about OK, but there are certain people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age. I certainly consider myself to be one of them, people who are sexually active younger. I think it particularly happens in the gay world, by the way.”
Milo Yiannopoulos holds a press conference near Pulse Nightclub after the shooting, Jun. 15, 2016. Photo: Getty Images
“This is a controversial point of view I accept,” Yiannopoulos added. “We get hung up on this kind of child abuse stuff to the point where we’re heavily policing even relationships between consenting adults, you know grad students and professors at universities.
“In the homosexual world, particularly, some of these relationships between younger boys and older men – the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationship – those relationships in which older men help those young boys discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable, sort of rock, where they can’t speak to their parents.”
The backlash against the comments was swift and fierce. Yiannopoulos was promptly dropped as the keynote speaker for the Conservative Political Action Committee’s yearly conference after the group said he was “condoning pedophilia.” Simon and Schuster, with whom Yiannopoulos had signed a book deal that included a $250,000 advance, also dropped him. Fox Business reported that Breitbart might fire him as editor, as well.
Yiannopoulos attempted to clarify the comments in a Facebook post entitled “A note for idiots.”
“I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst,” he wrote. “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.”
Yiannopoulos was expected to speak about his future at Breitbart during the 3 p.m. ET press conference in New York City, which can be streamed live below.
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