5-STARS STEP BACK FROM MINISTER’S ANTI-GAY REMARK

ROME The 5-Star Movement, one of the two populist parties in Italy’s new government, distanced itself Sunday from anti-gay comments made by a minister from its right-wing coalition partner, saying issues like samesex civil unions deliberately were kept off their common political agenda.

Family and Disabilities Minister Lorenzo Fontana, a member of the right-wing League party, said after the government took office Friday that families headed by gay couples don’t legally exist in Italy.

Fontana, who arrived for the cabinet’s swearing-in ceremony carrying his baby daughter and accompanied by his wife, told reporters that “families are those natural ones, where a child must have a mom and a dad.”

He added he also would work to beef up offices which can “try to dissuade women from aborting.”

A 5-Star Movement lawmaker, Maria Edera Spadoni, called Fontana’s comments not “opportune.”

“It’s no mystery that on ethical issues there are very different sensibilities” between the Movement and the League, Spadoni said in an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Spadoni said the differing positions of the two parties were why issues deemed “too divisive,” including abortion, living wills and LGBT families, deliberately were kept out of the policy pact the rival populist forces negotiated