“Though Your Sins are Like Scarlet:” (Isaiah 1:18) Milo Highlights a Specific Sin

You could have knocked me over with a feather when Milo Yiannopoulos cited Isaiah 1:18

“Though your sins are like scarlet, They will be made as white as snow.”

The reason you could have knocked me over with a feather is that he applied it to himself. Not only that, the “sins” he was referring to was his entire past homosexual life. No way did I see that one coming. Nobody was more flamboyant than he back in the day. Think of his “Dangerous Queer*” speaking tour of 2015-2017. Not only does he now defy the near-universal mantra of “once gay, always gay,” but he renounces that past as “sin.” 

In fact, that “once gay always gay” slogan is what triggered his citing Isaiah. Asking interviewer Tucker if he can use vulgarity on the show, upon which Tucker (presumably) allowed he might go 2, Milo went 5, and repackaged the above into an equivalent expression that will make the frumpy folks back home suffer stroke. Yeah, he was gay, he said, but he decided he wasn’t going to be that way anymore.  Upon so deciding, he kicked back at his own “folks back home” who would forbid him to stray.

I remember that this is what happened to Ani DiFranco, too. An early Ani lived as a lesbian. When she left that behind for straightness, she incurred nasty kickback from some of her fans. I know about Ani because my kids brought me along to one of her concerts, where I was easily the oldest person in the auditorium. She is a captivating performer. I once opined that she might be the next Bob Dylan. True, her lyrics are cruder than Bob’s (more akin to Milo’s), but then, it’s a cruder age, isn’t it? 

Tucker said he didn’t want to “out” anyone on his show. “Aw, I LOVE outing people!” Milo interjected, but then went on to more-or-less comply. He later made clear that he was not talking about outing “Phil the grocer,” but only high-powered public figures that he thought hypocritical.

Look, nobody—but nobody—but nobody flaunted the gay lifestyle more than Milo. What are the chances he would ever give it up—or that he COULD give it up? Isn’t it “once gay always gay” because they were “born that way?” Nope, he says now. That was just a PR campaign from the 80s designed to usher the gay lifestyle into the mainstream. What causes people to be attracted to the same sex? Some permutation of ‘domineering mother’ and ‘withdrawn father,’ he said. It also “helps” if one was serially molested as a boy, he adds. Milo said he qualifies on both counts.

Thing is, this dysfunctional relationship between parents triggering homosexuality was the prevailing wisdom in my youth, That’s what everyone spoke about. It has been shouted down since, but says Milo, it shouldn’t be. It’s one of the few things that Freud got right.

Toward the interview’s end, conversation rolls around to the topic of gay people changing. Can they? It becomes like that psychiatrist joke: 

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One. But the light bulb has to really, really want to change.

Milo does and is, as he highlights some strategies and even therapies towards that end. It doesn’t happen overnight, though. He does not now report that he is schmoozing up the women. Instead, he reports that he is now “five years celebate.” In the main, it wasn’t too far off from what I wrote nine years ago in the ‘Tom Irregardless and Me’ chapter dealing with homosexuality: 

“With any gays among [Jehovah’s Witnesses], it’s like swimming when swept out by the tide. They don’t try to swim against it, exerting all their might to will themselves straight; that’s a great recipe for failure; human sexuality doesn’t work that way. They don’t try to swim with the tide, abandoning themselves as slaves to their feelings. Instead, they swim parallel to it, likely for a long time, in hopes their feelings will eventually modify, allowing them to reach shore. Who else faces a comparable battle? It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? One might argue that their faith in God is deeper than that of most since they stay loyal to his arrangements despite the very real testimony of their own bodies. I have zero respect for frothing church types who rail against gays when they themselves have never been called upon to raise their little finger in comparable struggles.”

One platform flagged the original post for violating policy on hateful content. Upon reflection, I substituted ‘queer’ for ‘f***t,’ even though the latter was the actual word used. With that substitution the post sailed through. I’m not going to fight this. I could have appealed, and who knows—I might have won. I might have reached a human. “Oh, yeah,” he or she would say. “I see you just cited an event. You’re not throwing stones.” On the other hand, maybe I would be stuck with AI, or even a person who models himself after AI. “Did you use the 6-letter F-bomb or didn’t you?” it would say. “You’re lucky you still have a platform.

Easier just to change the word. I’m not opposed to cleaning up language, so if called upon to do it, there’s no need to make a big stink over it.

He’s a bold guy, Milo is, and always has been. With me, when they say ‘step out of your comfort zone,’ I reply that I am not necessarily comfortable even in my comfort zone. With Milo, the minute he spots a comfort zone, he steps out of it.

******  The bookstore