(Rome) Gay rights groups charged Wednesday that Italy’s state television censored Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” when it aired the Oscar-winning movie by cutting scenes of gay sex.

Activists protested that RAI TV would never have dropped similar scenes had they involved a heterosexual couple, and politicians called for the incident to be discussed in parliament. RAI said it had aired the cut version by mistake.

“Brokeback Mountain” is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start an affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in the 1960s. The 2005 movie won three Oscars, including the best director award for Lee, as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

RAI’s second channel aired the film late Monday cutting out a sex scene and a sequence showing a kiss between the lead characters, played by the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

“I don’t believe it was an oversight, I believe it was preventive censorship,” said gay rights advocate and former lawmaker Vladimir Luxuria. In an interview with La Repubblica daily, Luxuria said cutting the key scenes was “like showing the Mona Lisa without its head.”

RAI said in a statement the film had arrived from the distributor already cut so that it could be shown in prime time. When it was decided to air it late at night, no one checked for the uncut version, it said. RAI pledged to show the complete movie soon.

Some commentators and politicians were not satisfied, saying the cuts would not have been justified even if the film had been aired earlier.

“It is grotesque that RAI censored scenes that have the same content as those seen in most prime-time movies,” Benedetto Della Vedova, a conservative lawmaker, was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Luigi Vimercati, a center-left lawmaker, told Corriere he would take up the issue in parliament.

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

Massimo Gramellini, a top commentator for La Stampa daily, wrote in a front-page editorial: “I would like to understand why a kiss between two gays … should offend our sensibilities more than scenes of heterosexual sex or bloodthirsty violence.”

Olsen’s lawyer has twice refused requests for her to speak with investigators, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. The lawyer, Michael C. Miller, said the “Full House” actress has nothing to do with the drugs, and has already told the government everything she knows.

“We have provided the government with relevant information including facts in the chronology of events surrounding Mr. Ledger’s death,” Miller said in a statement Monday, “and the fact that Ms. Olsen does not know the source of the drugs Mr. Ledger consumed.”

The official confirmed a report that Olsen wants a promise of immunity from prosecution before speaking to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Olsen was a close friend of Ledger’s, and was the first person called by a masseuse who found the 28-year-old “Dark Knight” actor’s lifeless body in his Manhattan apartment.

Authorities have obtained a subpoena that could force Olsen to appear before a grand jury if negotiations with her lawyer fail, the official said. Other potential witnesses all have answered questions voluntarily, including doctors, Ledger’s ex-girlfriend Michelle Williams and anyone who was in his apartment around the time of his death, the official added.

DEA investigators suspect the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone found in Ledger’s system were obtained with phony prescriptions or other illegal means, the official said. Oxycodone is sold as OxyContin; and hydrocodone as Vicodin.

The other drugs, including anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills, were prescribed legally by doctors in California and Texas, the official said.

The medical examiner’s office wouldn’t say what concentrations of each drug was found, but made clear he was killed by the combination – not an excess of any one drug in particular. It’s common for the DEA to investigate an overdose death with so many different drugs involved, spokesman Garrison Courtney said last month.

The DEA’s New York office declined comment on the stalemate with Olsen, which was first reported Monday by the New York Post. There was no immediate response to a message left with a spokeswoman for Olsen.

The masseuse discovered Ledger’s body on Jan. 22. Police say she spent nine minutes making three calls to Olsen before dialing 911 for help, then called the actress a fourth time after paramedics arrived. At some point during the flurry of frantic calls, Olsen, who was in California, summoned her personal security guards to the apartment to help, police said.

Shortly after the Australian-born actor’s death, Olsen issued a statement that read: “Heath was a friend. His death is a tragic loss.”