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Max Irons doesn’t try to defend the crazy things dad Jeremy Irons said about gay marriage in 2013
As the cover subject of the latest issue of Out Magazine, actor Max Irons did not attempt to defend controversial comments previously made by his father about gay marriage.
Oscar winner Jeremy Irons told HuffPost Live in 2013, threw out a provocative question: ‘Could a father not marry his son?’
When host Josh Zepps reminded the actor about incest laws, the elder Irons said that ‘it’s not incest between men’ because ‘incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don’t breed.’
Max Irons now says: ‘I remember thinking, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re thinking about a problem out loud.” I know my father, I know his views are similar to mine. As long as you don’t harm anyone else, what you do and who you love and nobody’s business.
‘He has since clarified as far as I understand, and truth be told, if you pushed him to explain what he was talking about, I don’t think he’d actually know.’
Jeremy Irons seemed far more comfortable with civil unions in the HuffPost Live appearance: ‘It seems to me that now (marriage equality advocates) are fighting for the name. I worry that it means somehow we debase, or we change, what marriage is.’
The actor later said: ‘I felt I should’ve buttoned my lip. I was just flying a kite.’
In the Out interview, Max Irons was reminded of the details of exactly what his father said and reacted by dropping his head into his hands.
He eventually quips: ‘Well my father hasn’t proposed to me lately.’
Comments
(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)
FAEN says:
Jeremy Irons should know better. His comment was insulting and straight of NOM’s playbook. Civil Unions are just another way of pushing the ‘Seperate but Equal’ doctrine. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. In addition I am still waiting for a cogent explanation of how marriage equality hurts heterosexuals. FYI-it doesn’t.
Lexxvs says:
That’s why sometimes (sometimes) I wish I don’t know about the actor’s life and views, because it is hard for me to forget when they touch sensitive issues like this one in a horrible way. I could not watch such a good TV show like “The Borgias” after what he said, it ruined it for me because I couldn’t disconnect the actor’s offensive comments from the character. I’ve been with my partner for two decades now and it is easy to forget that even those who you thought as embracing gay people may be so ignorant about some specific issues. Some “knowledge” is only learned after a hard process, we gays usually have to do it because it is about our lives, but straight people… sometimes they have no clue, even if are not ill intended.
It not about “shutting one’s mouth” but learning by the way, silence leaves things to rot and later the stench surfaces and a backlash comes out, that’s why we have to exercise some patience too so they don’t get intimidated into silence instead of discussing and learning.