Article from: The Australian

GAY rights groups and the Italian Left have accused state broadcaster RAI of bowing to Vatican pressure by censoring the Heath Ledger film Brokeback Mountain.

Two scenes, one showing a kiss between the cowboys played by Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and one alluding to sexual relations between them, were cut from the Oscar-winning film when it was broadcast by the RAI Due channel on Monday.

In overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, skimpily dressed women are a fixture on TV, while scenes of sex and violence in movies are generally untouched.

Activists said yesterday that RAI would never have dropped similar love scenes had they involved a heterosexual couple.

RAI said it had aired the cut version by mistake.

Gaynet president Franco Grillini said the cuts had made the film "incomprehensible".

"What was so touching about that film were the scenes of affection that RAI brutally cut, distorting the sense of the film and transforming a great homosexual love story into a simple friendship between men," he said.

Arcigay chief Aurelio Mancuso called for RAI's parliamentary watchdog to step in. "Public service television cannot in any way support the homophobia rampant in this country."

The Mario Mieli Association, another gay group, said: "RAI Due has shown a bigoted spirit, transforming a delicate film about love and passion between two men, which was not vulgar, into a sanctimonious family film."

The consumer rights association ADUC said the cuts were "disgraceful censorship".

RAI chief Antonio Marano said the broadcast was a "technical error".

"I have never censored anyone in my life," he said.

He said RAI had asked for a cut version of the film to broadcast before the evening watershed, but by mistake had transmitted it late at night.

RAI director-general Claudio Cappon said the uncut version would be shown.

However, Luigi Vimercati, a centre-left deputy, said this "embarrassing" explanation did not "dispel suspicion about censorship". He noted that the film cuts followed a Vatican attack on a European Union proposal, put forward by France, for a UN declaration condemning discrimination against gays. He said heterosexual love scenes in the film had not been cut from the version shown by RAI.

Last weekend, gay activists demonstrated outside the Vatican in support of the UN declaration on the decriminalisation of homosexuality, which Monsignor Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's permanent observer at the UN, had said was unacceptable because it could be used to force countries to recognise same-sex marriage.