Jeremy Irons tries to clarify the father-son marriage thing, but still comes off as a windbag

Oh dear.

Jeremy Irons has so quickly gone from an actor who I so enjoyed seeing run down a staircase naked in Damaged to a man who I find to be an annoying windbag.

During an interview with with HuffPost Live earlier this week, Irons wondered if legalization of gay marriage could lead to legalized incest. (See earlier story HERE)

‘Could a father not marry his son?’ Irons asked.

Not that mothers are marrying their sons or fathers their daughters but, whatever.

He knows this has made him a laughing stock so he addresses the controversy in a blog post. Instead of saying: “I was temporarily insane” or “My body and mind were taken over by aliens” or better yet, “I was such an idiot and am going to think long and hard about what comes out of my eloquent mouth,” he wrote this on JeremyIrons.net:

I am deeply concerned that from my on line discussion with the Huffington Post, it has been understood that I hold a position that is anti gay. This is as far from the truth of me as to say that I believe the earth is flat.

I was taking part in a short discussion around the practical meaning of Marriage, and how that institution might be altered by it becoming available to same-sex partners. Perhaps rather too flippantly I flew the kite of an example of the legal quagmire that might occur if same sex marriage entered the statute books, by raising the possibility of future marriage between same sex family members for tax reasons, (incest being illegal primarily in order to prevent inbreeding, and therefore an irrelevance in non reproductive relationships). Clearly this was a mischievous argument, but nonetheless valid.

I am clearly aware that many gay relationships are more long term, responsible and even healthier in their role of raising children, than their hetero equivalents, and that love often creates the desire to mark itself in a formal way, as Marriage would do. Clearly society should find a way of doing this.

I had hoped that even on such a subject as this, where passions run high, the internet was a forum where ideas could be freely discussed without descending into name-calling. I believe that is what it could be, but it depends on all of us behaving, even behind our aliases, in a humane, intelligent and open way.