'Father Ted' creator Graham Linehan has been met with fierce backlash for comparing transgender activists to Nazis.
Graham Linehan
The 50-year-old comedy writer and director - who was warned by police in October after a harassment complaint from a transgender activist - is under fire for claiming that transgenderism is "something terrible happening like Nazism".
Speaking on internet radio show 'Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio', he claimed: "People do get very nervous... it's like putting your hand on a flamethrower. The opposition is so extreme and so frightening that eventually everyone is asking you to stop.
"My feeling is I can't, because it's too important. It's too important to the women in my life and it's too important to me.
"I'm now in a position where I can now answer the question honestly of, if you were around the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, would you be one of the people who said, 'This is wrong,' despite being opposed?
"When things are wrong, you should be allowed to point out that they're wrong."
The 'Black Books' and 'The IT Crowd' writer also claimed that he had negative experiences with trans people and recalled a situation where he witnessed a trans man being challenged by a woman when entering a female changing room.
He said: "The thing I can easily see happening, because I've had experience with these type of people already, is someone in a changing room, a man walks in, absolutely no indication he's a woman.
"The woman challenges it, the man says, 'No, I'm sorry, I'm a woman, this is my female beard, this is my female penis, and you're guilty of hate speech.' "
The LGBT community has spoken out and slammed Graham over the interview and his controversial comments.
One wrote on Twitter: "It sounds like you're comparing trans people to nazis, and we both know that would be f**king absurd."