Brokeback Mountain has had to suffer its share of digs and sideswipes since the initial wave of acclaim that greeted its release three years ago. These have ranged from the numerous, mostly good-natured chatshow gags and online spoofs, to the indignity of losing the best picture Oscar to Crash, a film that could more truthfully have been titled Why Can't We All Just, Like, Love Each Other And Get Along, Maaan?

To this roster of slights, Brokeback Mountain can now add the unhappy experience of being interfered with by Italian television controllers. Viewers who sat down to watch Ang Lee's plangent love story on television on Monday night got less than they bargained for when one of Italy's state-owned television stations, Rai2, screened an expurgated version which left it up to viewers to imagine exactly how Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) put the poke into cowpoke.

Let's be honest: as accounts of untamed desire go, Brokeback Mountain is a little on the tepid side. It's a wonderful film, and I believe completely in Ennis and Jack's passion for one another - in fact, I believe in everything about the film apart from Jake Gyllenhaal's greying facial hair. But explicit it is not. In terms of what we actually see, it's a case of Brokeback Molehill.

There's that first, dark night in the tent, which amounts to a bit of fumbling and growling, some huffing and puffing. For some reason, I always hope it will end with Ennis marking his withdrawal from Jack by delivering Austin Powers's classic postcoital signoff: "Aaaand ... I'm spent!" There is also that memorable, face-hugger-from-Alien smackeroo between Ennis and Jack, witnessed by Ennis's wife (Michelle Williams). But, all told, it's such a discreet film anyway that it's hardly worth fetching the scissors from the drawer to snip out those shots. To our eyes, the Rai2 cut would surely have resembled an extended Ted & Ralph sketch from The Fast Show, all nods and shrugs and coy sideways glances.

Rai (Radiotelevisione Italiana) is Italy's state-owned television network, and it has never been shy of curbing or silencing those who don't adhere to its conservative brief. Rai3, remember, was where Sabina Guzzanti's sketch show was originally transmitted in 2003 - only to be pulled after one episode because she lampooned the then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The whole scandal is detailed in her 2005 documentary Viva Zapatero! "Italy ranks 53rd in a worldwide index of media freedom, after Benin, Ghana and Bolivia," Guzzanti says in the film. "Did you hear anything about that in the news? No. But then again, if you had, we would not rank 53rd." More recently, Guzzanti's been in trouble for poking fun at the Pope.

When I interviewed her in 2006, she was careful to point out that censorship was endemic in Italian society. "Propagandists on the left want to put Berlusconi at the centre of everything," she said, "but he's only a symptom. It's dangerous for the public to think he is the cause, because then they will believe that everything is fine now that he's no longer prime minister. And it's a long way from being fine."

The case of Brokeback Mountain, while relatively trivial compared with the censorship and threats endured by someone like Guzzanti, proves that she has a point. Aurelio Mancuso, president of the Italian gay rights' group Arcigay, has gone so far as to claim that Rai2's treatment of the film is symbolic of Italy's general homophobia. "We want to know who decided to show Brokeback Mountain ... with such blatant, 1950s-style cuts," he said. "Who had the presumption to think an adult public could not handle the sight of kissing and intimacy between two men?"

It is only to be hoped that Rai2 doesn't get its hands on any other provocative material. If it does, Ang Lee might find his most recent movie Lust, Caution being screened simply as Caution, while Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs would have to be trimmed to 3 Notes. With its long, joyful kissing scene between Sean Penn and James Franco, Gus Van Sant's forthcoming Milk could only go out semiskimmed. And heaven help the hardcores: the entire back catalogue of Bruce LaBruce would be reduced to a few, subliminal blipverts. Somewhere, Pier Paolo Pasolini is shaking his head ruefully, and muttering whatever the Italian is for "plus ça change".