Italy's PM: I May Have The Hots for Teen Girls, But At Least I'm Not A Homo

Fending off charges of an improper relationship with a 17 year-old girl, 74 year-old Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is defending his "appreciation" for young girls by saying "at least it's better than being gay."

"As always, I work without interruption and if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it's better to like beautiful girls than to be gay," he told a meeting at a motorcycle industry show in Milan. "You should be completely reassured about the government and about the fact that it's a government that still has a majority that intends to govern until the end of its term," he said. Mr Berlusconi, who has tangled with the media over parties and women in the past, has been under increasing pressure since newspapers last week carried reports about the teenager who attended parties at his sumptuous villa at Arcore near Milan. The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported details of a phone call it said Mr Berlusconi made to a Milan police chief on Ruby's behalf when she was detained over a separate theft incident in May, raising questions of whether he improperly intervened. Mr Berlusconi says he helped Ruby, whose real name is reported by Italian newspapers to be Karima El Mahroug, but he denies exerting any improper pressure on police officers.

The Italian LGBT rights group Arcigay fires back.

“It is inacceptable – says Paolo Patanè, Arcigay’s National President - that a Prime Minister, in an obvious situation of difficulties because of his senile passions, pronounces such a homophobic and vulgar nonsense statement, insulting lesbian, gay and trans. We are not willing to become the scapegoat of a weak Prime Minister that with this statement shows that he belongs to a really old culture. Silvio Berlusconi’s way of representing the institution dishonours Italy and his ‘macho latino’ rudeness is among the causes of the grotesque climate in the country.” Arcigay immediately calls for an official apology from the Prime Minister and looks forward to meeting him to clarify this statement that truly offends homosexuals, their families, their friends and, in its utilitarian view, all the women. Arcigay has also written an urgent letter to the Minister for Equality Mara Carfagna, to ask her to stigmatize Berlusconi’s words that are still putting Italy in embarrassment in all Europe and the rest of the world.