Two comedians were branded homophobic in Italy, because they joked about issues such as sexual minorities or migrants, that are important for the left.

The incident happened in the Felicissima Sera television program, where the two hosting comedians, Pio and Amedeo, presented a video mocking politics, in which they were seen posing with migrants. Lefist support groups staged a protest, arguing that the humorists were politically incorrect, and demanding that their performances be cancelled.

„In Pio and Amedeo s Felicissima Sera we saw a bad example of comedy, in which they were joking with hate words, fuelled preconceptions, and evoked the spirit of the Nazi times. Channel CEO Pier Silvio Berlusconi should intervene to avoid such racist, homo- and transphobic programs appearing on television again,” said Fabrizio Marrazzo, spokesperson of the Gay Party, which advocates LGBT rights along with solidarity and environmental protection.

Senator Tommaso Cerno is to submit a number of questions to parliament regarding Pio s and Amedeo s show. „I expect PM Mario Draghi, who has vast experience in questions partaining to the economy and its relaunch, to realise the relaunch is not a new beginning with such discriminative programs,” he said.

Reacting to the accussations, Pio and Amedeo stressed that „we won t apologise. There are many gays, blacks and Jews who understood that these were only jokes, the real fans are not mad with us,” they said.

„Some may think we will apologise but we would like to warn everyone that they would be disappointed. We will not be politically correct the next time either. We believe that those who attacked our show did not even watch it in its entirety.”

The comedians added that „those who criticised our allegedly discriminative behaviour based on hearsay should first watch the whole show and express their opinions later. We ll fight against political correctness, clichés and hypocrisy. Besides entertaining, our goal is to express an independent opinion and to mock those who want to force political correctness on us.”