By now, most Americans have become aware of who Milo Yiannopoulos is.  The senior editor from far-right publication Brietbart News has spent the last year and a half going from state to state, giving speeches at college campuses and along the way finding himself in controversy after controversy, like the incident with actress Leslie Jones that resulted in him getting kicked off Twitter.  However, Yiannopoulos may have found himself in a situation where he is not going to be able to escape. 

On Jan. 24, 2016, Yiannopoulos appeared on a YouTube podcast titled the Drunken Peasants with main host YouTuber The Amazing Athiest.  The podcast went mostly unnoticed for a year until clips of the podcast were brought to life by a Twitter account named The Reagan Battalion where it appears he was defending pedophilia. In the video he is quoted as saying the following.

“People are messy and complex, and actually in the homosexual world particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, those coming-of-age relationships, the relationships in which those older men have helped those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable, a rock, where they can’t speak to their parents.”

Yiannopoulos came out with multiple responses from his Facebook account where on one post he said, “I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst.”

Yiannopoulos went on to state that the videos had been selectively edited and taken entirely taken out of context. He further described how he was a victim of pedophilia when he was a young teenager from one of his parish Catholic priests. But no matter. Yiannopoulos was disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference, lost his book deal with Simon & Schuster and resigned from his position at Breitbart.

The best case scenario here is that Yiannopoulos has a case of Stockholm syndrome and is trying to reason what happened to him as normal.  Even if that’s true, he should not be out making these statements to the public at large; he should be seeking psychiatric help. The worst case scenario is that Yiannopoulos is advocating for one of the most hated crimes in all of society; even prisoners treat it as the worst. 

Regardless of which one is true, the words still came out of his mouth, and are unequivocally wrong. 

For almost two years now, this columnist has defended Yiannopoulos, especially on his speaking tour, as many have tried to shut him down and abuse his right to free speech. This columnist agreed fully as he went around saying that many universities were abusing their conservative students and limiting their free speech.  His tour was about letting free speech be free speech again on American college campuses.

But he crossed a line here. Yiannopoulos was one day bound to say or do something so outrageous, as it is in his own nature to be outrageous, that no one could defend him. That day has come, and he has not only now lost his credibility, but the respect and admiration of many. 

One could think that this will be used by radical idealists to continue to attack free speech on college campuses and elsewhere. Instead of dealing with this issue for what it is – a man who is need of a lot of help or someone who needs to be dissociated with entirely from the public forum – it will be utilized as political brownie points to attack others. 

But that is a topic for the future. As for Yiannopoulos: he has made his bed, now he needs to lay in it.