With the gay marriage issue coming before the Supreme Court recently and becoming the subject of much debate across the US, it’s only natural that we’d start to ask actors what they think. Because after all, actors are just like us, only insane, and incapable of honest work or coherent thought. Someone recently asked Jeremy Irons his opinion on gay marriage, and why not? He’s Scar from The Lion King. And leave it to old Scar to finally broach the subject everyone else has been dancing around like a bunch of gay fairies: that if gay marriage was legal, fathers could just gay marry their sons to avoid paying taxes on their inheritance. IT’S OVER, EVERYONE! TIME TO GO HOME, JEREMY IRONS HAS CRACKED THE CASE!
Academy Award winning actor Jeremy Irons said Wednesday that while he doesn’t have much of a strong opinion either way on same-sex marriage, he believes it poses interesting questions, including whether allowing same-sex marriage would open the door for interfamilial relationships.
“Could a father not marry his son?” Irons asked HuffPost Live host Josh Zepps. Irons argued that “it’s not incest between men” because “incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don’t breed.”
I could go step by step trying to break down the basic idiocy of this argument, but suffice to say, any time your hypothetical begins with “Now, say for the sake of argument that it was legal to marry your own son…” I’m out. I’m just not that good at make-believe.
“Now if that was so, then if I wanted to pass on my estate without death duties, I could marry my son and pass on my estate to him.”
“Same rights, not the name. It seems to me that now they’re fighting for the name and I worry that it means somehow we debase or we change what marriage is. I just worry about that. I mean, tax-wise is an interesting one, because could a father not marry his son?”
“I think the lawyers are going to have a field day with same-sex marriage. I don’t have a strong feeling either way. I just wish everyone that’s living with one other person the best luck in the world, because it’s fantastic.” [HuffingtonPost via HolyMoly]
At this point you might rightly wonder, in Jeremy Irons’ scenario, just what kind of dynasty-obsessed blue blood would take the extraordinary step of getting gay married to his own son just to avoid getting taxed on his inheritance. The answer? Lizard People.