I’m a gay New Yorker — and I’m coming out as a conservative

By Chadwick Moore

February 11, 2017

Annie Wermiel

Chadwick Moore, a 33-year-old journalist who lives in Williamsburg, had been a lifelong liberal. Then, last September, he penned a profile for Out magazine of Milo Yiannopoulos — a controversial alt-right extremist who is an outspoken critic of feminism, Muslims and gay rights (despite being openly gay himself). Although the Out story didn’t take a positive stance — or any stance — on Yiannopoulos, Moore found himself pilloried by fellow Democrats and ostracized by longtime friends.

Here, he tells Michael Kaplan his story — including why the backlash drove him to the right.

When Out magazine assigned me an interview with the Breitbart.com rabble-rouser Milo Yiannopoulos, I knew it would be controversial. In the gay and liberal communities in particular, he is a provocative and loathed figure, and I knew featuring him in such a liberal publication would get negative attention. He has been repeatedly kicked off Twitter for, among other things, reportedly inciting racist, sexist bullying of “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones. Before interviewing Yiannopoulos, I thought he was a nasty attention-whore, but I wanted to do a neutral piece on him that simply put the facts out there.

After the story posted online in the early hours of October 21, I woke up to more than 100 Twitter notifications on my iPhone. Trolls were calling me a Nazi, death threats rolled in and a joke photo that I posed for in a burka served as “proof” that I am an Islamophobe.

I’m not.

https://nypost.com/2017/02/11/im-a-gay-new-yorker-and-im-coming-out-as-a-conservative/