Milo Yiannopoulos to open traumatising conversion therapy clinic in Florida
Milo Yiannopoulos at the Boston Straight Pride Parade on August 31, 2019 (Getty/Paul Marotta)
Self-titled “pop star of hate” Milo Yiannopoulos has announced plans to open his own conversion therapy clinic in Florida a week after declaring himself “ex-gay“.
The former Breitbart editor is currently appealing to the religious right in a desperate attempt to remain relevant after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook for violating hate speech rules.
With his followers and cash flow rapidly receding, he’s now telling anyone who’ll believe him that he’s 100 per cent “sodomy free” and is launching a “reparative therapy” clinic so others can join him.
“This has been the easiest thing to raise money for that I’ve ever done,” Milo Yiannopoulos told the New York Post on Monday (15 March).
“There is an enormous demand for this among people who believe they’ve been led astray by – it sounds silly to call it this – but you know, the gay establishment.
“I think part of that is the resurgence of religious, socially conservative, kind of reactionary politics among noisy young conservatives,” he explained.
So-called conversion therapy – which is sometimes known as “reparative therapy”, according to Human Rights Campaign – is often compared to torture and has been linked to higher risks of depression, suicide, and drug addiction.
There is no credible evidence that sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed in any way, and all efforts to do so have been rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organisation for decades.
But Yiannopoulos dismissed the mountain of evidence, claiming the perception of conversion therapy had been skewed by the “poisonous and wicked and evil” gay lobby.
“For those people to suggest that reparative therapy is somehow damaging to people’s self esteem is so laughably preposterous, I don’t take it seriously,” he said.
“Conversion therapy has a terrible reputation for precisely the reason that a lot of other things associated closely with either the religious right or the nationalist right have a terrible reputation – because they’ve been lied about consistently and strategically for decades.”
Milo Yiannopoulos is confident America’s “Christian renaissance” will bankroll him, claiming he already has people DMing him to ask: “‘Where do I send the f**king check?’ You know, like, get me in your program.”
But when asked in what sense he is now “ex-gay”, he conceded that it’s an ongoing process and right now he’s just managing a state of abstinence.
“Celibacy is a modest and achievable middle term goal; naturally, in the end, my aspiration would be to take it all the way,” he said, adding that he only uses the term “ex-gay” to troll critics.
