The leader of the right-wing party that is sharing power in Italy insists that undoing laws allowing same-sex civil unions and abortion aren't on the agenda of the new government.

League leader Matteo Salvini gave those assurances after Family Minister Lorenzo Fontana said that families headed by gay couples don't legally exist in Italy. League member Fontana defined "natural" families as ones in which children have a mother and a father.

A lawmaker from the 5-Star Movement, which is governing in a coalition with the League, called the minister's comments not "opportune." The vice president of Italy's Chamber of Deputies, Maria Edera Spadoni, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that the coalition's two populist partners have "very different sensibilities."

Italy enacted same-sex civil unions under center-left leadership in 2016.