Self-described “virtuous troll” Milo Yiannopoulos has long gotten away with peddling vice, but this apparently changed Sunday when two videos surfaced of the Internet provocateur speaking of man-boy lust in glowing terms.
I had actually reported on one of the videos — a 2015 interview with comedian and commentator Joe Rogan — in October of last year. It didn’t get around much then, but it and another damning video have now gone viral, resulting in serious damage to Yiannopoulos’ reputation and career.
In the Rogan interview (Video below. Note: contains lewd, crude language.), Yiannopoulos had described sexual activity he engaged in with a clergyman at age 13 or 14. He spoke of the experience positively, said he was the “predator,” and called his abuser a “great priest.”
This helps place in perspective comments Yiannopoulos made last year on an edition of the “Drunken Peasants” podcast. Here is the relevant portion, as presented by Heavy.com:
Milo: “This is a controversial point of view[,] I accept. 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.”
The men in the joint video interview then discuss Milo’s experience at age 14.
Another man says: “The whole consent thing for me, it’s not this black and white thing that people try to paint it. Are there some 13-year-olds out there capable of giving informed consent to have sex with an adult[?] Probably.”
The man went on to state that we nonetheless have to draw a line, which is why age-of-consent laws exist. Yiannopoulos then chimed in and stated (Video below. Relevant portion begins at 53:00. Again, contains foul language.):
“The law is probably about right; that’s probably roughly the right age.… But there are certainly 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 — in many cases, actually, those relationships with older men…. You know, people are messy and complex, in the homosexual world particularly. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming-of-age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents.
While I’m certain Yiannopoulos is no pedophile — and while he does, again, recognize age-of-consent laws’ necessity — there’s also no doubt that he was advocating a sort of “situational pederasty.” He was saying, in essence, “It’s okay for a man to have relations with a 13/14-year-old boy in the minority of cases where the boy is like me.”
Not surprisingly, however, Yiannopoulos has been accused of advocating “pedophilia.” He denies this, stating that the term is properly defined as sexual relations with prepubescent children (I agree with him on this point). This has become a bone of contention not just because many want his scalp, but because “pedophilia” has varying definitions.
The American Psychological Association article here defines it “as an erotic preference for children age 13 or under,” but then goes on to state that a “pedophilia diagnosis” cannot be supported if the given individual does “not have recurrent, intense sexual urges, fantasies or behaviors involving pre-pubescent minors.”
This is contradictory because the average age at which boys enter puberty today is 11 (it’s younger still for girls). This contradiction exists because the age of pubertal onset has been decreasing in recent decades, an interesting topic itself (it’s said the average age of male puberty’s onset at the 20th century’s turn was 16). And the “experts” who write articles on psychology, and other matters, often don’t have all their facts straight.
What is certain, however, is that Yiannopoulos was referring to pederasty, defined as sexual relations between a man and a boy (usually an adolescent). There’s also a newer, controversial term, “hebephilia,” referring to sexual attraction to youngsters between 11 and 14.
Yet all this talk smacks of psychobabble and can obscure a simple point: Whatever you call it, it’s never okay for a grown man to have sexual relations with a 13-year-old boy.
Period.
Yiannopoulos has admitted as much in a recent apologia he issued, referring to his sexual contact with the clergyman as “sexual abuse.” This is significant because, again, Yiannopoulos had called the experience “consensual.” Thus is he acknowledging that even if a minor is amenable (he legally cannot give “consent”), the act is still abuse.
So what explains the contradiction between the above and Yiannopoulos having earlier labeled the clergyman a “great priest” and having characterized the sexual activity as positive?
Aside from the obvious effort at damage control — Yiannopoulos’ scheduled CPAC speech and a 250K book deal were canceled after his scandal broke (though he says he has other publishers willing to publish his book), and he resigned Monday from his editorial position at Breitbart — something can be confidently said:
He is a conflicted man.
Consider: Years ago on the British program Ten O’Clock Live (video below; relevant portion begins at 4:57), Yiannopoulos stated, very soberly, “Something inside of me tells me that being a homosexual is probably wrong.” He also warned against reinforcing the notion that homosexuality is, as he put it, “a perfectly acceptable, normal, possibly even desirable lifestyle choice.”
Yiannopoulos also said in a 2016 Bucknell University event (video below) that homosexuality is more nurture than nature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgoyQevEhhQ
Even more tellingly, Yiannopoulos stated above that he wouldn’t adopt children because he didn’t want to raise them in a homosexual household — precisely because so much of sexuality is nurture. He said, in essence, that he wouldn’t want to be responsible for the children becoming homosexual.
The point? If Yiannopoulos believes caretaker homosexual influence on children is a bad thing, how can he believe that stranger homosexual influence — in fact, a stranger actually having relations with the youth — is ever a good thing?
He might say that the die has already been cast with a 13-year-old, and the abusive adult acts as a sort of drug, or crutch, that helps manage the dysfunction. Yet is this reasonable? If Yiannopoulos’ clergyman abuser had sought to properly mentor him instead of taking advantage of his sexual inclinations, might he have traveled a different road? And even if he doubts this, wouldn’t Yiannopoulos acknowledge that a certain percentage of boys in his shoes would, if only a wise man would touch them with love and not lust?
Yiannopoulos, raised Catholic and a defender of faith, also stated at Bucknell that he’d actually like to leave homosexuality. Among other things, however, it would be “professionally disastrous; I’d have to wait a few years,” he said, chuckling. Yet with his current scandal having visited great professional disaster upon him, he now may not have to wait a few years.
And that could be his silver lining. Perhaps God is withdrawing some of his professional success to provide some time, and impetus, for personal growth.
