Downton Abbey: The Greek Position

Greek state television came under fire from the country's main opposition party and critics for editing out a gay kiss on Monday's primetime premiere of popular British period drama Downton Abbey.

Greeks took to social networking sites such as Twitter to complain about the NET channel's decision to axe a scene from episode one of the first series showing a kiss between a visiting duke and Downton's unscrupulous footman Thomas. NET defended its move, citing parental guidance viewing rules.
"As incredible as it may seem for a democratic country in the 21st century, officials of the NET television channel censored the scene of a kiss between men from the TV drama Downton Abbey," the SYRIZA party said in a statement.
"This is of course an obvious case of censorship, an extreme act of homophobia and discrimination which unfortunately, after what has been happening recently, we cannot characterize as unprecedented."

The Independent.
Several papers ran with this - most just recycling a Reuters story.
It's of obvious interest to gay media, but why is it of interest to UK newspapers, especially when like The Independent they ignore so many gay news stories that really matter to their readers?
I think the subtext is an Orientalist one - "Those funny, unsophisticated foreigners, tsk!"
It seems the kiss was only cut from a pre-watershed transmission, then re-installed.
Not the sort of thing we worry about in dear old Blighty, of course. 
Hell no!

PS This all reminded Fagburn of a line from Boy George after Culture Club played a festival in Athens and got pelted and booed off; "Homosexuality?!! The Greeks bloody invented it!"