Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons isn’t a big fan of equal marriage, as he seems to think it’s going to allow fathers to marry sons so that they can avoid inheritance tax (currently no tax is paid if an estate is left to a spouse, although it is if it’s left to a child).
Irons was talking to the Huffington Post, and when asked about same-sex marriage, said, “Could a father not marry his son?”
When it was pointed out that gay marriage wouldn’t legalise incest, he answered, “It’s not incest between men”, as “incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don’t breed.” This led to him worrying fathers will marry sons just for the tax breaks, although it does seem that he genuinely believed incest between a father and son isn’t illegal (which is rather worrying).
He also adds, “It seems to me that now they’re fighting for the name. I worry that it means somehow we debase, or we change, what marriage is. I just worry about that.”
However it doesn’t seem something he’s really thought about it much, so perhaps he should have just kept quiet. He did add, “Everybody whose living with one other person the best of luck in the world because it’s fantastic. Living with another animal, whether it be a husband or a dog, is great. It’s lovely to have someone to love. I don’t think sex matters at all. What it’s called doesn’t matter at all.”
You can watch Irons talking about gay marriage below.
Whether criminal incest, or not, father-son relationships violate–and preclude marriage in–the standard degree-of-relationship prohibitions present in all canon and civil law about marriage (of every kind). Irons just doesn’t know what he is talking about, which probably becomes from being an actor.