Group cancels invite to Breitbart’s Yiannopoulos

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has been disinvited to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference after his attempt to clarify past comments on relationships between boys and older men fell flat with organizers. Hours later, his publisher canceled his book “Dangerous,” which had been scheduled to come out in June.

The American Conservative Union founded and hosts CPAC, which is taking place Wednesday through Saturday outside Washington. In a tweet Monday, ACU chairman Matt Schlapp said that “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.”

After the polarizing Breitbart News editor was invited, his invitation sparked a backlash. The conservative Reagan Battalion blog tweeted video clips Sunday in which Yiannopoulos discussed Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality.

Later Monday, Simon & Schuster and its Threshold Editions imprint announced that “after careful consideration” they had pulled the book, for which pre-orders placed it high on Amazon.com’s best-seller lists. The subject of intense controversy, “Dangerous” originally was scheduled to come out in March. But Yiannopoulos pushed back the release to June so he could write about the protests during his recent campus tour, including a canceled appearance at the University of California, Berkeley.

On Facebook, Yiannopoulos blamed deceptive editing and his own “sloppy phrasing” for any indication he supported pedophilia. The British author said he spoke of his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the U.K. is 16.