The mayor and city council of Rome wanted to remind Christmas revelers that life is not always so easy for LGBT youth, so they swapped out the city's usual holiday lights for rainbow-colored ones—outraging far-right Romans.

On Friday, mayor Ignazio Marino and councilwoman Imma Battaglia authorized the new lights along a mile stretch of  Via del Corso, one of the Eternal City's main shopping thoroughfare. Battaglia, who is a member of the progressive Sel party and heads up an LGBT-rights group, revealed they had the idea after a gay teen committed suicide in Rome earlier this year. "That is how we came up with the rainbow flag idea," she said.

Cut to manufactured rage from the right (See, we didn't invent it in America): "The idea is provocative and ideological. There should be an Italian tricolor instead," said assemblymember Fabrizio Ghera of the reactionary Fratelli d'Italia  party.