Top fashion icons and former same-sex couple Dolce & Gabbana were forced to issue a statement that attempts to minimize their attack on gay families and IVF children.

It’s been a challenging few days for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. The iconic fashion designers behind the Dolce & Gabbana label who were themselves a same-sex couple for decades shared their views on same-sex marriage and children created by in vitro fertilization, and the response was not positive.

Telling an Italian magazine that gay families are not real families, the couple said,Â “The only family is the traditional one.”Â

Procreation “must be an act of love,” Domenico DolceÂ added.Â “I call children of chemistry, synthetic children.Â Uteri [for] rent, semen chosen from a catalog.”

“The family is not a fad,” said Stefano Gabbana. “In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging.”

Elton John was among the first of several celebrities to respond to the claims, calling for a boycott. The singer-songwriter who has two children he is raising with his husband, David Furnish, charged the Italian designers with being “judgemental,” and displaying “archaic thinking.”

His call for a boycott was quickly supported by several celebrities, including Ricky Martin, Courtney Love, Ryan Murphy, Victoria Beckham, and John Barrowman, among others.

Now, with Elton John’s campaign making headline news, Dolce & Gabbana have been forced to walk back their anti-gay comments, issuing statements to the Huffington Post that seem to contradict their earlier remarks.

“We firmly believe in democracy and the fundamental principle of freedom of expression that upholds it,” said Stephano Gabbana who hadÂ unleashed a huge rant on Instagram, calling Elton John a “fascist” and his detractors “racist dictators.” No apology was offered for those remarks. “We talked about our way of seeing reality, but it was never our intention to judge other people’s choices. We do believe in freedom and love,” Gabbana added.

Domenico Dolce issued a longer statement, citing his upbringing as the source for his beliefs.

“I’m Sicilian and I grew up in a traditional family, made up of a mother, a father and children. I am very well aware of the fact that there are other types of families and they are as legitimate as the one I’ve known. But in my personal experience, family had a different configuration. That is the place where I learnt the values of love and family. This is the reality in which I grew up, but it does not imply that I don’t understand different ones. I was talking about my personal view, without judging other people’s choices and decisions.”

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Image via Instagram

Video via NBC News/Today Show

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