Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Comments about gay sex with boys cost right-wing journalist £250k book deal
Publishers have ditched plans to release a book by a controversial former Canterbury schoolboy after comments he made about sex provoked outrage.
Milo Yiannopoulos, who went to the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, had been paid a $ 250,000 advance by Simon & Schuster ahead of publication of Dangerous later this year.
He has also resigned as an editor of the conservative website Breitbart after admitting that his “poor choice of words” was detracting from his colleagues’ work, so he was quitting immediately.
The latest controversy comes after an edited video emerged of Mr Yiannopou- los saying that sex between “younger boys” and older men could be a “coming-of-age relationship … in which those older men help those younger boys discover who they are”.
The 33-year-old conservative journalist, who is openly gay, insists the video was “selectively edited”.
He said: “I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home.
“That’s perfectly true and every gay man knows it. But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to prepubescent boys.
“I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the UK is 16.”
Simon & Schuster said it had taken its decision after “careful consideration”.
It is the third time that Mr Yiannopoulos, who works for right-wing news website Breitbart, has seen a book deal collapse.
He added: “I’ve gone through worse. This will not defeat me.”
In November, the Boys Langton cancelled a talk he had been due to give at his old school after the Department for Education counterextremism unit told senior staff that his presence was a risk to pupil safety.