Singaporean teenager Amos Yee is embroiled in yet another controversy after publicly voicing out support for pedophilia in his recent Youtube videos.
Yee has received harsh criticism and even death threats after posting three videos on the topic, on 15, 17 and 20 November, entitled Why Pedophilia Is Alright, Don’t Discriminate Pedophiles, and Free Speech for the Pedophile respectively.
The 18-year-old, who is presently in Chicago after having been granted asylum in the US, argued that pedophilia is acceptable in principle in his videos on the matter.
Yee has previously expressed controversial views on sexual age of consent laws, advocating that such laws should be eliminated:
“I feel that if a person below the age of 18 perfectly consents to having sex with an adult, he should be allowed to do it. And the adult who has sex with that person should not be sent to jail for it.
“I had thoughts that I wanted to have sex with 20-year-olds when I was 16. So why shouldn’t I be able to do it? And if I did do it, it does not at all make sense that legally, the 20-year-old that my 16-year-old self had sex with should go to prison for it?”
The teenager, who was set to give his first public talk at the prestigious Harvard University, alleged that the organisers of the talk had abruptly cancelled the event less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to speak because of these controversial views.
Yee alleged that this was the same reason why he was banned from the Mythopoeic Society Conference (MythCon) last month but stood by his views. He also vehemently denied claims that his views promote rape and child abuse – the teenager stated that he would “never promote violence to anyone.”
Asserting that he himself is not a pedophile in his most recent videos, Yee clarified that he is expressing his support for pedophilia based on principle.
Netizens have not taken kindly to the Singaporean and have characterised him as a pedophile or closet pedophile, a troll, an agitator, deluded, a threat to polite society, and an attention seeker:
Several YouTubers have also uploaded response videos pertaining to Yee’s recent videos and have excoriated his views online.
https://theindependent.sg.sg/amos-yee-believes-harvard-cancelled-his-talk-because-of-his-controversial-views-on-sexual-age-of-consent-laws/