Feb. 21 (UPI) — Provocative British writer and alt-right celebrity Milo Yiannopoulos resigned from his senior management post at Breitbart News on Tuesday, following days of widespread outcry over remarks he made that seemed to advocate sex between men and young teen boys.
Yiannopoulos, 32, resigned as senior tech editor at the conservative news outlet at a press conference in New York City on Tuesday afternoon.
“Breitbart News has stood by me when others caved,” he said. “They have allowed me to carry conservative and libertarian ideas to communities that would otherwise never have heard them. They have been a significant factor in my success. I’m grateful for that freedom and for the friendships I forged there.”
Yiannopoulos began taking heavy fire last week for videotaped remarks he made in the past — in which he seemed to condone sex between adults and teenage children.
In one web-streamed video interview from January 2016, he said that adult men have “helped those young boys discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love.”
“You are advocating for cross-generational relationships here. Can we be honest about that?” one interviewer asked.
“Yeah I don’t mind admitting that,” Yiannopoulos answered. “In the gay world, some of the most important, enriching and incredibly life-affirming, important, shaping relationships between younger boys and older men, they can be hugely positive experiences.”
Yiannopoulos also joked about longtime allegations of sex abuse between priests and young boys in the Catholic church — and called laws establishing an age of consent for sexual relations “arbitrary and oppressive.”
After the video remarks touched off a full-blown scandal, the writer took to Facebook late Sunday to reject questions over whether he advocates child sex abuse.
“I do not support pedophilia. Period,” he wrote. “It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. There are selectively edited videos doing the rounds … that suggest I am soft on the subject.”
Tuesday, he emphasized that he himself was a victim of child sex abuse.
“I still don’t view myself as a victim. But I am one,” he said.
“I said some things on those internet live streams that were simply wrong.”
As a result of the comments, publisher Simon & Schuster has canceled a forthcoming book by Yiannopoulos, Dangerous, and the American Conservative Union rescinded an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week near Washington, D.C.
“I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues’ important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately. This decision is mine alone,” Yiannopoulos said Tuesday. “When your friends have done right by you, you do right by them. For me, now, that means stepping aside so my colleagues at Breitbart can get back to the great work they do.”
It was reported that Breitbart began to evaluate Yiannopoulos’ future at the company on Monday night, and that some employees had even threatened to quit if he was retained.
“Milo Yiannopoulos’s bold voice has sparked much-needed debate on important cultural topics confronting universities, the LGBTQ community, the press, and the tech industry,” Breitbart said in a statement. “Milo notified us [Tuesday] morning of his decision to resign … and we accepted his resignation.”
Yiannopoulos has been a provocative voice at Breitbart, where he addressed numerous cultural and political issues. He has also, at times, drawn criticism on a number of controversial topics — including gay slurs and mass Muslim immigration.
During his remarks Tuesday, Yiannopoulos said the United States has a “colossal free speech problem.”
“The land of the First Amendment has some of the most oppressive social restrictions on free expression anywhere in the Western world,” he said. “I’m proud to be a warrior for free speech and creative expression. … and I will continue to do that. I’m not going anywhere.”
The conservative writer has toured college campuses around the country in recent months, including a speaking event at the University of California, Berkeley, that was ultimately canceled earlier this month when protests turned violent.
