“Why on earth did we need to know? “
hmmmmmmmmmmmm let me think….
Because someone asked?
It was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?
To all those people who were previously HP fans and have suddenly turned against the series because of this… You people were never fans at all.
Dumbledore said “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
and
“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”
Now is the time when the fandom will be tested and we’ll be able to see who the real HP fans are, the ones who truly understood the themes of tolerance, bigotry and love. And to those who made the choice to stop being fans because of this, I do not resent you, I do not hate you. I pity you.
Yes, that was the question. And JK gave an honest answer – he fell in love with Grindelwald, hence he was gay.
I think it’s very brave of Jo to tell this in the USA, where being gay is still not quite accepted. It’s not something I had thought of about Albus and it won’t change my attitude towards him. But it reminds me of Rita Skeeter writing about his relationship with Harry being “abnormal” or something. But as far as I see it, the relation between Harry en Albus was a parental one. It’s pedophiles who prey on children, not gays!
“But the sick possibility is there now.”
No, it’s not. For the milionth time, just because someone is gay, it doesn’t mean they will fall for every man they’ve ever seen. Are you attracted to every man you’ve ver met? Look at McGonagall. I’m pretty sure she loved Harry too. Would it ever occur to you that she was attracted to him? I think not. It was said clearly by Jo that Harry was like a son for DD. Please, stop making these assumptions, guys.
“Maybe some homosexual will find them in the garbage bin…”
Good one, Dan. Cuz you really find alot of gay people just rollin around in the garbage. If you’re gonna throw out a great series of books because you have a personal problem with a character being revealed as gay then you’ve got some serious issues that YOU need to deal with. The world is slowly coming around to the notion that being gay is okay. Just like it did with the notions that women should be able to vote and black people shouldn’t have to sit in the back of the bus. There were people like you back then too who also opposed these ideas. Being gay and having gay people/characters included in our media and entertainment is becoming more accepted. So what’re you gonna do about it? News Flash: You can’t do anything about it. You’re just either gonna have to accept it or you can be one of those haters that people just learn to ignore and who ends up living a bitter life and stroking out in the end.
Maya, you said this:
“I know there’s no reason to think that Dumbledore would ever make a move on Harry at any point in the series, but the sick possibility is there now.”
I assume you’re female. Whenever you pick up the kids from friends from school, does that mean you have any sexual intentions to them? If you do so, that’s called paedophilia.
Lets put it this way. If Dumbledore was straight, wouldn’t that have made the Hermione – Dumbledore relationship kinda weird? You know, he might’ve been after here…... WRONG. Straightness/gayness has NOTHING to do with liking kids.
I don’t understand the hypocrisy of so many people on the subject of homosexuality. Whether you’re pleased with Rowling’s “revelation” about Dumbledore or not, how in all honesty is it courageous? This news from the speaking tour is being picked up by mainstream media with most of the press fawning about it. Now, if a young fan had asked her, “I always thought so and so character seemed gay for this or that reason from the book, and is this true?” and Rowling had said, “Oh, no, no. I wouldn’t put any gay characters in Harry Potter books”, how many of you folks would say she was courageous? Or villainous? She obviously has her own reasons/thoughts for imagining Dumbledore the way she did, but revealing his homosexuality doesn’t improve the story and it isn’t “courageous”. Far from it, Rowling was merely fashionable in telling us this.
No matter how one feels about the subject, I despise intellectual dishonesty. Those who pretend that constantly celebrating homosexuality is somehow courageous (or rebellious) in Western countries are either dishonest or live life with very serious blinkers on. At best, they are espousing a point of view, a currently very fashionable point of view. Now, they may be right when they condemn those who take a traditional (“traditional” being the p.o.v. everyone pretty much believed for the last 5000 years until maybe the 1970s) position that criticizes lesbianism and buggery. But, either way, the latter have to be more courageous than the former in today’s Britain or America. And I suspect they’re more aware of dissenting points of view than the former. There is nothing more “open-minded” about believing homosexuality is completely normal and natural than believing it is unnatural and sinful. One statement is just more fashionable. Which one(or neither) is TRUE?
That’s why Rowling’s “lesson” of “tolerance” for the series is a false one. THAT, rather than discovering Dumbledore’s sexual orientation is what’s disappointing about her.
See, what this has done. You are all analysing the stories now, looking for it, reading between the lines. It is sad, why did JK do this to us.
Candy—It’s bigots who make gayness a scandal, not Jo or others who choose to see it as a normal part of life. And do you think that orientation isn’t innocent? Is it an altered, un-innocent view of the world to know that there are women, and men, and left-handed, and right-handed, and black, and white, and gay, and straight people that live in it? I strongly feel that you using the phrase “spoil it” and “gay is okay” in the same breath is intensely contradictory. If it’s ok, then why would it spoil anything?
I feel really sad to hear you say that “ignorance is bliss.” Where has that kind of thinking has gotten us in the past?
Kharlo, Grace Weasley, Bloodelf etc. – you are the voices of reason around here.
This was WTMI on Dumbledore. I’m sorry, but 7 & 8 year old kids don’t need to have atypical human sexuality shoved down their throats. Fortunately, Jo never aluded to this peculiar side of Dumbledore in the books. Now we see that Aberforth wasn’t the only Dumbledore with off-center proclivities. Probably due to their dad being taken away from them at a critical stage in their life. They both lacked a strong male role model in the family, and thus “drifted”.
The thing that is even more disturbing is the number of ‘social progressive’ people on here applauding this revelation, as though it were some kind life changing momentus occasion. Perhaps they need to stop and consider that if their parents were gay, they wouldn’t be around to discus this subject, or any part of the HP series of books.
Life goes on …
I have to agree with “gaymanspeaks” – if she really meant for Dumbledore to be gay from the beginning, then she should have made it clear at some point in the HP books or during an interview while the books were still being written. It just doesn’t make sense to come out with it now. People are calling her courageous for making Dumbledore gay, but to me it seems cowardly to wait until after all the books have been bought and published, as though she (or her publishers) didn’t want it to affect book sales. If someone was going to decide not to buy/read the books just because Dumbledore was gay, they should’ve been given the opportunity to do so. Now there’s probably going to be some sort of idiotic “throw away your Potter books” petition set up by homophobes and religious fundamentalists. This is going to offend a lot of people, not so much because of they are anti-gay-rights, but because it’s blindsided everyone and we as readers deserved better than that. Personally, it’s destroyed the way I think of the Dumbledore-Harry relationship. I know there’s no reason to think that Dumbledore would ever make a move on Harry at any point in the series, but the sick possibility is there now.