For years, Milo Yiannopoulos has notoriously used social media to promote an alt-right agenda by bashing Muslims, Black Lives Matter activists and feminists, and perpetuating racist trolling against Blacks, including comedian Leslie Jones. The self-proclaimed conservative “gay exceptionalist” even used the Internet to bash gay rights.
But it seems Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart News employee who hosted a”Gays for Trump” party in 2016, may not practice everything he preaches. He announced in Instagram posts that he wed his boyfriend who is Black on Saturday.
In one photo his groom, onlyidentifiedas “John,”has his back facing the camera showcasing the words “Blind for Love” on the back of his suit jacket. Another photo shows the couple pouring champagne into a tower of glasses.
Yiannopoulos’ penchant for racist trolling got him permanently suspended from Twitter in July 2016. He began insulting “Saturday Night Live” comedian Leslie Jones and then provoked his followers (he had more than 300,000) to troll her as well.
At first Jones blocked the tweets, but then she beganretweeting them to show the interactions. Yiannopoulos’ followers compared Jones to Harambe, the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo, and made a slew of other derogatory comments.
Yiannopoulos was temporarily banned from Twitter several times prior for violating the company’s terms of service through offensive tweets, which often fanned political tensions.
Following a barrage of racist tweets at Leslie Jones, co-star of “Ghostbusters,” Milo Yiannopoulos’ account was permanently suspended.
Heis a former senior editor at Breitbart News, thefar-right websitewhereousted White House Chief StrategistStephen Bannon, the force behind Trump’s most contentious policies, including his Muslim ban, returned as executive chairman in August.
Yiannopoulos and his groom chose to marry in Hawaii, where same-gender marriagewas legalized in 2013. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-gender marriagenationwide.
In 2015, a week before the Court’s ruling, he wrote a Breitbart column titled, “Gay Rights Have Made Us Dumber, It’s Time To Get Back in the Closet.”
“Forcing gays back into the closet solves the problem of what happens to children when they have two dads or two moms,” he wrote.
“The good news is that gay rights are in the minority, globally speaking. China, India and most of all Russia, proudly celebrate the importance of the nuclear family.”
In July 2016, during the presidential campaign,Yiannopoulosparticipated in a “Gays for Trump” party in Cleveland andposted a videoof the event on his YouTube page.
“It’s no secret that Donald Trump is the most LGBT-friendly presidential candidate the GOP has ever fielded, and one of the most gay friendly presidential hopefuls of all time,” Yiannopoulos, who has referred to himself as the“glittering leading light of the conservative gay movement,” wrote in a column last year.
The Trump administration has not exactly been “gay friendly.” Almost immediately following Trump being sworn into office on Jan. 23, all references to LGBTQ rights on theWhite House website were deleted. On July 26,Trump announcedthat transgender people would not be allowed to serve in any capacity in the military. And, on the same day, the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, said thatsexual orientation is not a basis to protect someonefrom discrimination in the workplace.
In February, Simon & Schuster canceled the publication of Yiannopoulos’ book “Dangerous” after podcasts surfaced in which he made questionablecomments about pedophilia.He then resigned from Breitbart.
“Milo Yiannopoulos’ bold voice has sparked much-needed debate on important cultural topics confronting universities, the LGBTQ community, the press, and the tech industry,” Breitbart said in a statement following his resignation.
That same month, college students at the University of California at Berkeley did not want to hear Yiannopoulos’ political rhetoric. Violent protests took place in opposition of his planned campus speech. The university cancelled his scheduled appearance.
Trump threatened to cut fundsfor the Berkeley campus in a Twitter posting accusing the institution of failing to support free speech and practicing violence against innocent people. At the time, Bannon was still his chief strategist.
Yiannopoulos self-published his book, “Dangerous,” in July and is suing Simon & Schuster for $10 million.
