U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and State College Borough Council have added their voices to those condemning a controversial far right commentator speaking at Penn State this week.
Milo Yiannopoulos, a British media personality and provocateur, is scheduled to speak at the University Park campus on Wednesday in an event with the tagline “Pray the gay away.” Yiannopoulos — who has been accused of misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, transphobic comments — described himself earlier this year as an “ex-gay man” and now advocates for conversion therapy.
Uncensored America, a student organization founded at Penn State in 2020, is hosting Yiannopoulos, who will speak about “free speech, faith, conversion therapy, hair style, and more,” according to the event’s website.
“Ahead of the Uncensored America event on Penn State’s campus this week, I want to express my dismay at the choice of speaker and condemn the hateful and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that this event promotes,” Casey, D-Pa., said in a statement on Monday. “Every student deserves a safe environment to learn and this event is antithetical to Penn State and our Commonwealth’s values. To the LGBTQ community at Penn State: I stand with you and I will continue to fight in Congress for you and your rights.”
A Change.org petition urging that Yiannopoulos be uninvited had more than 11,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon. Several Penn State student organizations have spoken out in opposition to the event. Leadership from Penn State’s University Park Undergraduate Association, Lion PRIDE and Queer and Trans People of Color, issued a statement on Tuesday to “strongly condemn the message and intent” of Yiannopoulos’s appearance at the university, writing that it “promotes homophobia on campus.”
“The advertisements displayed across campus stating ‘Pray the gay away’ have been reported as trauma-inducing for victims of conversion therapy, and have severely impacted the mental health and the personal and educational daily routines of affected communities as a result,” they wrote.
During their meeting on Friday, State College Borough Council members, in agreement with a recommendation by the borough’s LGBTQ Advisory Committee, unanimously endorsed a statement in support of those student organizations and their opposition to Yiannopoulos. It did not specifically call on Penn State to cancel the event.
“This event brings hate, bigotry and exclusion to the Penn State campus and to State College Borough,” Council President Jesse Barlow said in reading the statement.
Council’s statement noted a formal resolution in 2016 “condemning Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, sexism and homophobia, in rhetoric or action, restating the Borough’s commitment to serving all people and committing to supporting, promoting and standing up for the values of inclusion, equity and justice.”
It also noted State College was the first municipality in Centre County to ban discrimination in housing and employment based on gender preference.
In 2018, the borough banned conversion therapy, practices that attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, among others have called for a ban on conversion therapy and the practice is prohibited from use on minors in 20 states.
“As borough council has asserted repeatedly over the years, the borough is working for an inclusive community that welcomes all,” the council statement continued. “That philosophy is a cornerstone of the Borough’s strategic plan. onsistent with the values that informed these actions, State College Borough joins these student organizations in condemning the message and intent of the ‘Pray away the gay’ event at Penn State.
Council also endorsed a counter-event titled “Love Is Louder,” which is being hosted by Penn State’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity from 6 to 10 p.m. on Wednesday at the HUB-Robeson Center in opposition to Yiannopoulos’s appearance. The event will feature music, food, and activities to “inspire love and community within the Penn State student body,” according to its organizers.
Penn State officials have denounced Yiannopoulos and his rhetoric, but said they cannot prohibit the event from taking place.
In a letter issued after the event’s announcement last week, three university administrators wrote that they shared “the profound dismay others have already expressed” and called his past presentations at other college campuses “antithetical to Penn State’s values.”
They wrote, however, that Uncensored America has a constitutional right to host the event on campus.
“Yet as offensive and hurtful as Yiannopoulos’s comments have been and are likely to be again, and despite our own abhorrence for such statements and the promotional tactics used, Uncensored America has the undeniable Constitutional right to sponsor this presentation on our campus,” they wrote. “The University lacks the right to do anything to stop it.”
Prior to his advocacy for conversion therapy, Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 after calling African-American actress Leslie Jones “a black dude” and “barely literate” and encouraging abuse directed against her from other Twitter users. He was banned from Facebook in 2019.
In 2017, Yiannopoulos was forced out as editor of the right-wing media organization Breitbart News and uninvited from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference after being accused of advocating for pedophilia. He said his remarks that sexual relationships between 13-year-olds and adults can “happen perfectly consensually” and “can be hugely positive experiences” were attempts to cope with his own experience as a victim of child abuse.
Yiannopoulos also has been accused of advocating for violence against journalists. In 2018, he reportedly told a New York Observer reporter that he “can’t wait for vigilante squads to start gunning down journalists on sight” and doubled down on it, saying that’s a “standard response.” Yiannopoulos later said his comments were only intended to taunt reporters.
He also has been accused of associating with and promoting the views of neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
In their letter last week, the university administrators said student groups “select the speakers they invite to campus without the university’s endorsement, or even with the University’s displeasure, as is the case here.”
“As a public university, we are fundamentally and unalterably obligated under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to protect various expressive rights, even for those whose viewpoints offend our basic institutional values,” they wrote. “To do otherwise not only violates the Constitution, but would undermine the basic freedom each of us shares to generally think and express ourselves as we wish. A public university cannot impose the risks of censorship on those whose viewpoints it does not like without equally risking censorship for all, including those viewpoints it strongly endorses.”
They added that they hope students and community members “will avoid being baited into reacting” and instead “oppose bigotry, misogyny, transphobia, and anyone who is determined to make their living by dividing us.. by ignoring him.”
State College Borough Councilman Evan Myers said Penn State’s position that the event is protected speech “belies reality.” The 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh by a man who espoused anti-semitic and white nationalist views illustrates “how hate speech can lead directly to action.”
“People do not have a constitutional right to incite violence. It is against the law,” Myers said.
” [Yiannopoulos] has the right to say anything he wishes,” Councilwoman Theresa Lafer said. “I will also say we have the right to boycott him. And we certainly have the right to say what he… is known for and what his topic is are one, against a local ordinance and, two, a form of violence and intimidation against a minority group in our community.
“I hope that most of you will stay far away from him so that he has the smallest possible audience. And I hope that we will continue to stand for what is right as a community. It is easy to ignore individual speakers. It is not easy to ignore the damage they cause.”
