DC Trawler

Everybody’s outraged that Jeremy Irons said gay marriage could lead to fathers marrying their sons for tax reasons

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In addition to decrying Michael Bloomberg’s nanny-state food fascism, actor Jeremy Irons is making waves this week by presenting a hypothetical about gay marriage that, I’m told, he shouldn’t have presented. Shame, shame, shame, Jeremy Irons!

Here’s Mr. Irons on HuffPost Live yesterday, talking to host Josh Zepps:

“I mean, taxwise it’s an interesting one, because… You see, could a father not marry his son?… It’s not incest between men. Incest is there to protect us from inbreeding. But men don’t breed, so incest wouldn’t cover that. Now if that were 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.”

Zepps replies that there’s still a “moral approbation” associated with incest, which seems like an odd argument to make regarding any aspect of gay marriage. If we’re going to disregard some people’s “moral approbation” about homosexuality, why should anybody’s “moral approbation” about incest continue to be encoded in law? Saying that it can’t happen because it’s illegal is pretty silly, when you’re talking about changing the law in the first place.

To borrow an argument from gay-marriage proponents: How would a marriage between father and son affect your marriage, gay or straight? How would it take anything away from your marriage? Who are you to tell someone else what the institution of marriage should and shouldn’t be?

But that’s just resorting to logic and making people face the ramifications of their own rhetoric, which is why people like John Aravosis and Sarah Karlan and Mary Elizabeth Williams are hyperventilating over it. You’re not supposed to talk about the unintended consequences, you bigots. They’re unintended!

Jeremy Irons seems confident enough in himself and his opinions not to be worried about getting kicked out of the Cool Kids’ Club. I sincerely thank him for what is sure to be another entertaining meltdown from our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters on the left.

(Hat tip: Andrew Johnson)