While support for gay causes is always welcome, there are times when it would be nice if someone could support it quietly. That’s especially true if what they’re going to say both puts their foot in their mouth and may be used by the type of bigots who devour any badly phrased comment to try and prove their point.

That’s what’s happened with Nick Cassavetes, director of The Notebook, My Sister’s Keeper and the upcoming Yellow. He seems to be in favour of gay marriage, but when saying so, he’s managed to equate it with incest, one of the favoured targets of the rabidly anti-gay (i.e., if gays can marry, it’ll lead to incest being acceptable).

Yellow partially deals with incest, and when talking to The Wrap about it, Cassavetes says, “I have no experience with incest. We started thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know what? This whole movie is about judgment, and lack of it, and doing what you want.

“Who gives a shit if people judge you? I’m not saying this is an absolute but in a way, if you’re not having kids – who gives a damn? Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want? If it’s your brother or sister it’s super-weird, but if you look at it, you’re not hurting anybody except every single person who freaks out because you’re in love with one another.”

Well, when shagging your sibling, the possibility of genetic mutations if you should have any children (even accidentally), does make it rather different. We do kind of know what he means, but it’s not a particularly fair comparison as there are some very different aspects to take into consideration than gay relationships. Hopefully he can phrase it better when doing more publicity for the film.