Italy's public television broadcaster
RAI1 has been accused of censoring an episode of a German television
series in which two men marry in a Catholic convent, Italian daily La
Repubblica reported.
The series A Cyclone in the Convent
(original title Un Himmels Willen) began airing in Italy in
2004.
On Wednesday morning, the station
decided to skip over the episode titled Romeo and Romeo and
air the series' next chapter, A Legendary Grandfather,
instead.
In Romeo and Romeo, production
designer Gerhard Scharf and teacher Gunther Reichert decide to get
married in the convent's chapel. The ceremony is officiated by the
mayor. (The marriage scene, in German, is embedded in the right
panel of this page.)
“[T]he series is too long, we had to
pull out one episode,” said Mauro Mazza, the station's director
responsible for censorship. He added that had the marriage been held
at a city hall there would have been no problem.
It is not the first time RAI has been
accused of censoring gay relationships.
In 2008, the broadcaster was criticized
for censoring sex scenes in the Ang Lee-directed Oscar-winning film
Brokeback Mountain, which
featured two cowboys in love separated by homophobia in a small town.