On Tuesday, Milo Yiannopoulos announced his resignation from Breitbart News, where he was a senior editor. Yiannopoulos' departure follows the release of two video clips in which he made comments seemingly condoning pedophilia. In one of the clips he joked about his childhood sexual encounter with a Catholic priest, and in the other he seemed to "speak sympathetically of certain relationships between adult men and 13-year-old boys," CNN reported.
Earlier Tuesday, Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow deemed the remarks "indefensible" and "troubling," though he said "the left" has done worse. "I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues' important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart effective immediately," Yiannopoulos said in a statement. "This decision is mine alone."
On Monday, Yiannopoulos lost a $250,000 book deal with Simon & Schuster and was disinvited from speaking at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference due to his comments.
Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook after the video clips were released that he does "not support pedophilia," which he called a "vile and disgusting crime." "I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim," he wrote. "My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous."
Read Yiannopoulos' statement of resignation in full below. Becca Stanek