How Could You Represent Someone Like Milo Yiannopoulos?

By James Esseks, Director, LGBT & HIV Project

August 9, 2017 | 12:00 PM

Tags

• Free Speech
• Racial Justice
• Transgender Rights
• LGBT Rights

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How free speech protections fuel civil rights movements.

Milo Yiannopoulos trades on outrage. He is a professional provocateur who has turned insulting different groups of people into a specialty.

He has claimed that the very existence of transgender people is the product of delusional thinking. He has compared Black Lives Matter activists to the KKK. And he has fostered both anti-Muslim bias and disdain for women in one breath, characterizing abortion as "so clearly bad for women's health that it falls second only to Islam.”

Here at the ACLU, we vehemently disagree with Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. We work hard, every day, with the very communities he targets, to fight for equal rights and dignity for all. We recognize that his words cause grievous pain to many individuals, their families, and their loved ones. Speech like his hurts.

Yet even though we know how wrong-headed Mr. Yiannopoulos’ speech is, the ACLU today filed a lawsuit to defend his free speech rights.

Say what?