[From “Milo Yiannopoulos to open conversion therapy facility in Florida”]

“For those people to suggest that reparative therapy is somehow damaging to people’s self esteem, is so laughably preposterous, I don’t take it seriously,” the author said.

...

Milo compared the reputation associated with the fringe practice to more mainstream conservative elements, adding that the research on it is skewed.

“Conversion therapy has a terrible reputation for precisely the reason that a lot of other things associated closely with either the religious right or the nationalist right have a terrible reputation,” Milo alleged, “Because they’ve been lied about consistently and strategically for decades.

“We don’t know very much for sure, we have a relatively clear idea about a lot of it, but here’s the thing: since the eighties and nineties, we haven’t really been able to do any research that doesn’t conform to the propaganda because you cannot get funding for anything other than finding the gay gene,” he said. “So we’re operating in a gray area.”

Asked by The Post about his views on the nature of sexuality, specifically how much of it is engrained in a person from birth versus being a choice, Yiannopoulos argued that “the jury’s still out, scientifically.”

“Anybody who tells you that they know the short, precise etiology of homosexuality is lying to you,” he said.

“Scientists don’t know, theologians don’t know, the pope doesn’t know, and I don’t know. But there are things that we do know,” he continued. “The current consensus, scientific and everything else, seems to be that there are people who are born with a greater or lesser predisposition toward homosexuality.

“What we also know for sure, is that ‘born this way’ is not science. It’s public relations. It’s a lie.”

Milo claims he will be using his new organization to help find a clearer understanding of the factors influencing human sexuality.