Milo's Right! That's What's So Wrong!
By now I'm sure you're all familiar with the Milo Yiannopoulos controversy that broke out of late. Shortly after the release of a video where he appears to advocate "cross generational" sexual relationships between 13 year old boys, Yiannopoulos was disinvited from CPAC, lost his six-figure book deal with Simon & Schuster, and resigned from his position at Breitbart. It's difficult to see how the rising star of the Alt-Right could have been rendered, however temporarily, more obsolete.
There is no way around the fact that Milo Yiannopoulos did in fact defend the benefits of pederasty, homosexual relations between adult males and pubescent boys. And the particular interview that surfaced is not the only time he has made light of such. Nevertheless, one of the refrains that emerged from Milo sympathizers was that while he raises so many good points that appear so consistent with conservative principles, his remarks this time simply went too far.
I watched the relevant clips, and have come to a very different conclusion.
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The fundamental problem for Milo's sympathizers is that he emphatically did not go too far. In fact, Milo is absolutely right; there is nothing wrong with 13 year old boys sexually experimenting with grown men if we accept as normative secular sexual redefinitions.
It is time we come to terms with the fact that we in our modern secular age have redefined sex and sexuality in such a way that makes Milo's perspective perfectly normative. If marriage is no longer the boundary for socially accepted sexual activity, what precisely is that boundary going to be? If a young man can self-identify as a woman, then why can't a 13 year old self-identify sexually as an adult?
Am I the only one who found it ironic that on the same day the incriminating video surfaced, the NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that he was ready to punish states considering legally preventing grown men from using the same public restrooms as little girls? Silver, along with Yiannopoulos, is simply fulfilling his secularized job description.
We in our morally incoherent secular age have dislodged sexuality from any objective moral standard and as such, whatever arguments we use to justify homosexuality could be equally applied to any other sexual practice. It just becomes a distinction without a difference. The fact is that groups like NAMBLA and other homosexual activists have been openly advocating for the legalization of pederasty for decades.
And by the way, our universities are totally down with that, and I'm not even talking about the madhouse brothels that are so misleadingly called dorms. No, a number of university publishing houses and professors sound an awful lot like Milo.
In 2003, the University of Minnesota Press published Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by activist Judith Levine, which, among other things, advocated the age of sexual consent to be lowered to the age of 12.
In 2010, two professors of psychology in Canada declared before members of parliament that pedophilia was a legitimate sexual orientation.
In the same year, University of Hawaii professor Milton Diamond, produced a study that concluded child pornography could be beneficial to society. Diamond claimed, "Potential sex offenders use child pornography as a substitute for sex against children."
And in the following year, a group of psychiatrists calling themselves B4U-Act met together with nearly 40 other professionals from such universities as Harvard and Johns Hopkins at a symposium in Baltimore to discuss removing the social stigma associated with pedophiles. The organizations website states: "Stigmatizing and stereotyping minor-attracted people inflames the fears of minor-attracted people, mental health professionals and the public, without contributing to an understanding of minor-attracted people or the issue of child sexual abuse."
So what precisely is Milo saying that a number of professors aren't?
You see, given secular norms, Milo's perfectly right ... and that's the problem. To the extent that those on the right defend his remarks, they are indistinguishable from the secular insanity of the political left.
Yet, Milo Yiannopoulos is considered by many an attractive poster boy for the political right precisely because he turns all of the leftwing stereotypes upside down. Milo offers hope that even members of the so-called LGBT community are starting to see the liberal totalitarianism of the political left. And since politics is about addition and not subtraction, Milo looks to be a powerful apologist for the normalization of rightwing nationalist populism among all types of Americans.
In fact, one of the ironies in all of this is that Milo sees himself as a defender of Christianity. He fully recognizes, intellectually at least, that Western civilization is historically held together by Christian cultural norms. However, if we no longer know the difference between male and female or love and lust, how then are we going to tell the difference between right and wrong, good and evil? While he and his followers may think themselves defenders of Christianity, if they have their way, there's not going to be much of anything Christian to defend.
Milo Yiannopoulos throws into relief a most significant question for Christians: are we going to steer this nationalist populism towards a distinctively Christian, human affirming direction, or are we are going to subsume our Christian distinctives to just another nationalist idolatry?
Milo Yiannopoulos is representative of the political populism that appears to have made its peace with secular sexual norms. These twin trajectories would appear to make Milo right; and that's what's so wrong.
