Following an outcry over remarks he
made on gay marriage, actor Jeremy Irons says he was just being
playful.
During a Huffington Post Live
interview, Irons, 64, said that he worried that such unions would
“debase” marriage.
“It seems to me that [in England]
they're fighting for the name and I worry that it means somehow we
debase or we change what marriage is,” Irons said during a
Huffington
Post Live interview. “I just worry about that. I mean tax
wise is an interesting one. Because … you see, could a father not
marry his son?”
“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.”
In a letter posted Friday on his
website, Irons dismissed the notion that he's anti-gay.
“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,”
Irons
wrote.
“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.”