Rome, 9 Dec. (AKI) - Italian gay rights' group Arcigay on Tuesday criticised the censorship of the award-winning cowboy movie, 'Brokeback Mountain', by the country's state television channel. The movie was shown on Rai2 on Monday without controversial gay sex scenes. The group says it will ask Rai2's director and Rai2's president to publicly defend the channel's decision to censor the movie and has asked Rai to screen it again in its original version.

"We want to know who decided to show 'Brokeback Mountain' yesterday evening with such blatant, 1950s-style cuts," said Arcigay's president, Aurelio Mancuso.

"The film won the Golden Lion Award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, as well as three Oscars and four Golden Globes," said Mancuso.

"Who had the presumption to think an adult public could not handle the sight of kissing and intimacy between two men?"

Arcigay is demanding a public explanation from Rai2's director and from Rai's president, he said. The group will also take the case to Italian state television's watchdog, Mancuso noted.

"Public broadcasting cannot be allowed to stoke the homophobia that is spreading in Italy," he stated.

The group has asked Rai to show an uncut version of the film as "a conciliatory gesture", he said.

Directed by Taiwan's Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain is a love story between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy set in the American West over two decades, from the early 1960s to the 1980s.