Eliza Collins

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference announced Monday that they have withdrawn a speaking invitation to Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay conservative Breitbart editor, after video surfaced of him defending sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and grown men.

President Trump will also be speaking at the annual conservative headliner event later this week.

Critics on the left and right attacked CPAC this weekend when video of Yiannopoulos' comments about young boys was circulated on Twitter by The Reagan Battalion, a group that bills itself as a conservative news source. On Monday, The Reagan Battalion posted a second video where Yiannopoulos said that when women talk about their sexual assault experiences it is “really just a way for women to tell you that they’ve been hit on.”

In a video of an interview with The Drunken Peasants podcast, Yiannopoulos — discussing relationships with boys as young as 13 — said there is merit to "some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships." He described, in particular "the relationships in which those older men have helped those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love . . . and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents.”

When one of the other guests in the video said: “It sounds like priest molestation to me,” Yiannopoulos shot back that he’s “grateful for Father Michael” for giving him sexual experience.

At another point in the video, Yiannopoulos said that all sexual relationships between young boys and older men are not categorized as pedophilia. He said it depends on how "sexually mature" the young men are.

“You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means, pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody who is 13 years old — who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty,” he said.

In a statement Monday, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp said, "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 at the Conservative Political Action Conference."

Yiannopoulos had become a hero in some conservative circles over fiery rhetoric and disdain for political correctness, especially on college campuses. Earlier this month his speech at the University of California Berkeley was canceled after protests of his appearance turned violent. Trump responded by threatening to pull funds from the school.

In his statement Monday Schlapp noted that Yiannopoulos has responded to the video on Facebook, but he said that was not enough. "It is up to him to answer the tough questions and we urge him to immediately further address these disturbing comments."

In a Facebook post Sunday night titled “A note to idiots” Yiannopoulos said he was joking about that specific incident. "If I choose to deal in an edgy way on an Internet livestream with a crime I was the victim of that's my prerogative. It's no different to gallows humor from AIDS sufferers."

"I’m guilty probably of some very imprecise language, certainly, that my position on this is absolutely clear. I’m horrified by child abuse and I have a long reporting history of exposing people involved in it. I've exposed three pedophiles in my reporting history," Yiannopoulos said in an interview with USA TODAY Monday. “Because this is something that happened to me, in my life, I think I always felt like I could talk however I wanted about it."

"And I appreciate that my usual sort of British sarcasm and provocation and humor and all the rest of it probably came across as very flippant in some of the conversations that are floating around. That was unintended and I regret the imprecise language," he added.

He added that people were angry at him and so they were "wrenching this stuff out of context and trying to present me as some kind of monster."

In addition to Trump, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Steve Bannon are also scheduled to speak at the conference.

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