One year after beginning a journey to overcome homosexual behavior, British conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos delivered a video message to his “gay brothers and sisters,” calling the occasion his “straight-iversary.”
“It’s a year from the day I said I was going to put sodomy and lust behind me and live more closely to God’s wishes for me,” he said.
“And since I have done that, everything in my life has begun to get better.”
Yiannopoulos said he believes he has a responsibility “to share this gift with others.”
He’s managed to get where he is, he said, because of prayer, “appealing to our heavenly father for the strength to resist urges,” and the “tough love” of his listeners and viewers.
In March, Yiannopoulos said in an interview with LifeSiteNews he had experienced a transformation through his faith in Jesus Christ. Later that month, he announced he plans to open a “reparative therapy” center aimed at helping “other people go through the same journey that I’m on myself.”
Yiannopoulos said in the video his progress also is in part due to “the haters, the skeptics, the deniers.”
“It’s the scorn and doubt poured upon this just as much as, in a sense the love, that has made it a pleasure to prove people wrong,” he said.
But he emphasized the importance of people who care for him holding him accountable.
“Tough love is the love that matters,” he said. “And my readers and listeners have given me just that. They’ve given me a lot of tough love. And without that, I don’t know if I’d be here today.”
He said he has a “spiritual and moral obligation to make good to the people I’ve hurt and to reach minds I haven’t touched yet and offer them help, if I can, to embark on the same journey.”
Yiannopoulos said if you’re someone who identifies as gay and has lingering doubts, there is “good news.”
“‘Born this way’ is a lie,” he said. “It’s propaganda. It’s not true. You can get better. You can change.”
He said fundraising has begun for his clinic — to be located somewhere in Florida — and the interviewing of therapists will take place over the summer.
In the meantime, he said he wanted to offer hope.
“I love you, and I’m going to do everything I can to provide you with the tools you need to get better.”
See the video:
In the LifeSiteNews interview in March, he said that “[s]ecular attempts at recovery from sin are either temporary or completely ineffective.”
“Salvation can only be achieved through devotion to Christ and the works of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,” he said.
Yiannopoulos said that “anyone who has “read me closely over the past decade must surely have seen this coming.”
“I wasn’t shy about dropping hints. In my New York Times-bestselling book ‘Dangerous’, I heavily hinted I might be ‘coming out’ as straight in the future. And in my recent stream-of-consciousness Telegram feed, I’ve been even more explicit — stomach-churningly so, if the comments under my ‘x days without sodomy’ posts are anything to go by,” Yiannopoulos said.
“I’ve always thought of myself as a Jack Bauer sort of figure — the guy who does the hideous, inexcusable things no one else can stomach, without which the Republic will fall. I know that means my name will always be cursed, and I’ll always be a scorned outsider, so the temptation is to throw out any consideration of living well or truthfully. But even Jack Bauer has to confront his maker sooner or later.”
Yiannopoulos said he “was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles.”
He said he treats homosexuality “like an addiction.”
“You never stop being an alcoholic,” he said.
His life has changed slowly but dramatically.
“It feels as though a veil has been lifted in my house — like there’s something more real and honest going on than before. It’s been a gradual uncovering, rather than a dramatic reveal. Maybe that lack of theater or spectacle is a sign the gay impulses truly are receding?” Yiannopoulos said.
“The best metaphor I know is that of a flower blooming — of nature’s Epiphany — an image I know Caryll Houselander was fond of. I think it was Houselander who said, ‘Whatever is loving in man and whatever is lovable in man is Christ in man.’ I take this to mean that the more love and the less lust in us, the more we cease to obscure Christ and instead reveal Him, in whose image we are made.”
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