Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Monday lost his coveted keynote speaker spot at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference over comments he made in video clips released by a conservative website Sunday.
Because of Yiannopoulous' comments on relationships between boys and older men in the video, "the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation," said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the group that sponsors CPAC, Politico reports.
The cancellation came as Yiannopoulous tried to clarify his taped comments, first issued on Twitter by The Reagan Battalion, which also touched on Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality.
The backlash came after Yiannopoulous, an editor for Breitbart News, was invited to to speak at the annual CPAC gathering, which begins Wednesday.
Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook that he blamed deceptive editing and his own "sloppy phrasing" for any indication he supported pedophilia.
The British author says he spoke of his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the U.K. is 16.
It's unclear who edited the videos.
The Reagan Battalion is a blog that describes itself as "news, information, commentary, from a conservative perspective."
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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