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Milo Uninvited to CPAC
Well, that was quick. A message from ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp:
Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
We realize that Mr. Yiannopoulos has responded on Facebook, but it is insufficient. It is up to him to answer the tough questions and we urge him to immediately further address these disturbing comments.
We initially extended the invitation knowing that the free speech issue on college campuses is a battlefield where we need brave, conservative standard-bearers.
Conservative social media exploded over the weekend concerning the invitation of Milo, a right-leaning provocateur who has been met with protests and banning from college campuses. As people registered their opinions, pro and con, The Reagan Battalion released a recording of Milo defending pedophilia on the popular Joe Rogan podcast.
Published in General
A simple “like” is insufficient. Excellent ideas, well stated.
No problem, I can definitely relate!
@amyschley I would disagree that Milo supports no conservative values. Even as a flamboyant gay man he unabashedly defends bakers right to refuse service to gay weddings or events. He is unabashedly pro Christianity, in particular Catholicism. He is a classical liberal in the original sense and is an advocate of individual liberty. Yes, he isn’t the best representation of conservative social values, yet as a gay man in his speeches he acknowledges the rights of religious people to not agree with his lifestyle. This is a man who has traveled the US and sought out conservatives of all types including social ones to exchange ideas. I would challenge you to overcome your initial dislike. He is doing more than just about any freedom loving speaker to reach center left and left leaning people about the threats to the liberty and freedom.
Amy is exactly right. Milo sounds like a spokesman for NAMBLA. There is nothing good about this.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I could care less if Milo speaks at CPAC. I do think CPAC has handled this poorly. They probably should not have invited Milo and once invited they should not have removed the invitation.
Milo seems to have responded to all this. Pointing out his work against pedophilia.
http://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2017/02/19/milo-yiannopoulos-responds-to-critics-over-cpac-speaking-invite/
If Milo is accurate, which he seems to link to his actual writing, then this would seem to be people not familiar with his body of work making an issue out of a poorly worded comment in an interview.
But it’s not just splitting hairs. Puberty makes a difference. If you’re attracted to prepubescent children, you’re a sick freak. But if someone is biologically an “adult” (even if not chronologically), you’re lying to yourself if you say people shouldn’t be attracted to them. Of course, acting on that attraction is a completely different issue.
There’s a reason Traci Lords was a top world-wide porn star for several years in the 1980s, even though every single movie she made was made when she was under 18. And what she did was not “kiddie porn” except in the hairsplitting legal sense.
Wasn’t Milo one of those who found evidence of the transgender girl/guy’s own tendencies to pedophilia during his investigation of GamerGate? Sarah Butts/Nyberg?
Wait, here’s a link:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/09/11/leading-gamergate-critic-sarah-nyberg-claimed-to-be-a-pedophile-apologised-for-white-nationalism/
I’d be suspicious, I don’t see Brietbart or Infowars.
And Roman Polanski made a great Macbeth to introduce people to Shakespeare. Doing a few good things doesn’t make up for being a skeevy pervert.
If I might ask what has he done to reach those of the center left and left? Where has he attempted to seek out conservatives of all types for social exchanges? I can think of a ton of others who have and as far as I know they were not invited as speakers to CPAC. As to him being a classical liberal I don’t know if I agree with that statement. trump is not a classical liberal and there were far more classically liberal candidates to support during the primaries and Milo chose to vociferously support trump.
On top of all of this it was already mentioned in this thread by another person in reference to the Maher Show transcript that Milo does not even consider himself conservative and I have seen in other interviews where I have watched him that he considers himself “libertarian” and a provocateur (he also helped to popularize the term cuckservative). If he was truly libertarian then I again consider his support of trump to counter that allegation although I do not contend his self described title of provocateur as he has repeatedly stated in interviews that he is all about being provocative and that currently being an opponent of the left is provocative.
I don’t see the merit in having Milo chosen as a speaker. In fact him being chosen and Matt Schlapp’s (the ACU chairman) public announcements on twitter towards Milo struck me as seeking political attention rather than actually trying to advance the conservative philosophy. But that is the current issue for a number of conservative groups. Many have misconstrued trump’s victory for a massive popular victory and see the need to woo his supporters.
But trolling some leftists is not conservatism.
Yes.
I’m just not a fan of people whose modus operandi or raison d’etre (look at me with the fancy words – and yes, I know they mean different things, that’s intentional) starts with offending others.
I find this whole episode so dispiriting. The use of the word boy in his video is being taken to mean minors. This is absolutely not the way it would be understood in England.
In England a minor is referred to as a little boy or child. Young males are still referred to as boys until they leave school at 18 or 19 years old. In my family you were a boy until you married. So my brother who married at 16, having left school to work at 14, was a man. My other brothers who did not marry until they were in their late twenties were called boys for ten years longer than him.
This is the demographic to which he is referring. Essentially in American parlance, sexually mature, middle to high school males. He is absolutely not talking about minors.
This video slices out of a complete interview an hyperbolic, gallows humor, statement by Milo about us own abuse at the hands of a priest. A form of humor that gets me into serious trouble with Americans all the time btw. This statement is then blended seamlessly with his use of the word boy, to describe himself, ( an aggressive and sexually precocious adolescent, not a minor), in a relationship with an older man.
We truly are separated by a common language.
I’m not sure what you mean by “minor” but a middle school aged person is legally a “minor”.
Speaking as somebody who has little use for Milo, I might presume that a “NAMBLA speaker” would be at CPAC to talk about that issue. This is one of many shocking things Milo has said, and it seems unlikely he would bring it up at CPAC.
I think there are arguments to be made on both sides. Many of them have been made, but here’s how I’d summarize them:
I can’t form a strong opinion either way this time, so my inclination is to support the ACU’s decision because it’s their decision to make. I just hope they considered points 2 & 3 when making it.
The circular firing squad rides again.
Is there a way to promote this one comment to the main page?
I think I should defend Milo on this.
This is just a problem of imprecise meaning it seems to me. My understanding is that the term minor is defined as relating this issue as someone who does not have the legal rights of an adult. Therefore, a person is still a minor until the day before their 18th birthday in America at least.
Clearly, IMO, sex with a minor is not immoral. Nor is a relationship between a minor and an adult as that could be as little as 2 days difference.
Milo also references this definition difference in his Facebook post
Milo admits to using imprecise language which anyone who watches live streams will know is not unique.
He is using that to refer to when he lost his own virginity. He specifically says that is abuse (in the denotative way, as in “illicitly taking advantage of a situation,” as Milo says he initiated), not that it was OK. What he is saying is OK is that he had relations with an older (I believe 30-year-old) man when he was 17, which he claims was good for him (and other homosexual fellows).
They cancelled his book deal too.
Moral to the story: don’t defend sexual relationships between adult males and middle schoolers.
Everyone is getting snookered by a coordinated effort to assassinate the character (yes, even Milo has a character to assassinate) of someone the left (and Useful Idiots on the right) don’t agree with. With the riot at Berkeley, Milo stopped being a small fry, but noticed by everyone. CPAC shouldn’t have invited him in the first place, but they are doing the typical conservative/Republican thing and folding to the left’s Alynsky tactics.
Sorry which member of this nefarious cabal forced Milo to defend the practice of adult males having sex with middle schoolers?
Yep, the left is celebrating heartily tonight. They’ve already made the point on Twitter that conservatives are now on board with the Berkeley riots. Regardless of what you think about Milo or whether he should have been invited to speak at CPAC, conservatives now have no leg to stand on when complaining about campus censorship, or at least that’s the way it will be portrayed.
Because disinviting someone from your event is the same thing as rioting. Only leftists could believe something so inane.
Moral to another story: don’t pretend you know all the facts.
Jamie, you may have set a new benchmark for “reductio ad absurdum”, but maybe that’s not your intent.
Oh by all means please enlighten us.
Here is Milo’s apology. He mostly owns that this was a crisis of his making. As said earlier, Milo has done some good things, especially when it comes to shining a light on free speech police at our universities. For that he should be commended. He obviously has used his childhood trauma (he doesn’t mention 13 year old boys here, only 17) to make light of what most sane people view as a morally reprehensible. But, I still agree with him being cancelled by CPAC. There is a fantastic slate of conservatives … and even President Trump ;). Milo would have been a sideshow which would have taken away from the purpose so many are investing their time and resources going.
https://youtu.be/lAzd7B2iB8w
When even Brietbart is thinking about dumping you, you know you made a mistake:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/02/20/breitbart-news-may-boot-milo-yiannopoulos-over-sex-comments.html
Moral to the story: don’t defend sexual relationships between adult males and middle schoolers.