“Homosexuality is not about platonic love, friendship, or having a deep relationship; it is about sex.”
What? That is so stupid. Heterosexuality is equally about sex. I’ve been with my boyfriend for just over a year & it is certainly NOT about sex! I love him and he loves me and we have an amazing relationship. Don’t know what you’re on about! I suppose, because you’re straight, had you found out that two of the older students were lesbian, you’d be all over it… like most straight guys.
Like Concerned , and I said this earlier, I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be gay. Nor did Dumbledore. It’s just not something that happens. Why don’t some straight people get this?
No wonder certain people on here have lost respect for Dumbledore: Hogwart’s greatest, wisest, kindest, loving and un-prejudiced Headmaster. He’s just too good and u can’t accept it.
At first I didn’t want to reply this because the number of responses for so little a thing is astounding and I wasn’t sure I wanted to add to the chaos at all!
But I think we already knew this anyway, people are just tying unnecessary baggage to the word ‘gay’ that they shouldn’t because it makes Dumbledore no different to use that word than it does to not. We KNEW he had a fixation with Grindelwald, we read that in the books. Now we know a little bit about why, besides what we knew about him desiring an equal in cleverness … which is very interesting, I loved all the Dumbledore back story! Him having romantic feelings for Grindelwald is much less worrying than him admiring Grindelwald’s principles! Love can be so blind, a message that we’ve seen in the Harry Potter books before! Well, it can be even blinder to a lonely man like Dumbledore!
I’m so surprised at the number of people having ignorant and bigoted thoughts about this, or even those saying ‘Aha! that explains everything!’ ... well, no, it doesn’t. It fills in the little details to a quite sad tale of unrequited love and adds to the ongoing theme of Love that the books have, whether it being blind or that it can make you do crazy things and it explains why Dumbledore – who in many ways could be quite like Voldemort … Big, powerful, lets his cleverness get the better of him, can play with people’s lives in a very cold sort of way – is more human than Voldemort, because he not only can love but can do something so human as let that get the better of him by loving what turned out to be a madman!
I’m not going to go on at the bigots that have revealed themselves here because, frankly, nothing I or anybody else here can say will change their minds … It’ll only make them feel like the controversy they’ve created is justified when they see how many responses they’ve had, and that’s not a very good thing.
I will say to the people that are saying this is just a publicity stunt on JK’s behalf … Yeah, she planted somebody to ask her about Dumbledore’s love life just so she could cause a stir about a character in a book. Oh, and she really needs more publicity because she’s not already the most famous woman in the world. If you believe that then you’re either clutching at straws while pretending the problems hers and not yours or you’re adjusting your tin foil hat as I type.
It doesn’t MATTER! Everyone is arguing about a characteristic of a FICTIONAL character! HP is all about LOVE…so we need to respect all people. And ya know… Albus is JK’s character…so she can do whatever she wants with him-remember she never published this info in the books.(which was a good move.) cause now it’s sturring up the community of potter lovers, and we can’t have fans turning against eachother. (don’t you realize what this is doing to us!) We need to get over this trivial detial, respect others oppinions, and move on:)
For me, this vindicates Dumbledore’s past as described in DH. I couldn’t understand why he would be friends with Grindelwald or agree with him. But love is blinding, so now I can forgive him for that.
“It doesn’t MATTER! Everyone is arguing about a characteristic of a FICTIONAL character! HP is all about LOVE…so we need to respect all people. And ya know… Albus is JK’s character…so she can do whatever she wants with him-remember she never published this info in the books.(which was a good move.) cause now it’s sturring up the community of potter lovers, and we can’t have fans turning against eachother. (don’t you realize what this is doing to us!) We need to get over this trivial detial, respect others oppinions, and move on:)”
Precisely. It is NOT written in the books.
All I can say is wow – the real adult bigots have got out of bed on this one. They feel like they were slapped in the face, deceived by JK. How so? Should she have provided a manifest of characters with their back story, got them vetted by the US Christians before being able to write about them? What it comes down to is the reality you death eaters will not begin to realise is that people all along the continuum of human sexuality live among you. Gay people as part of that continuum are a part of life but because of societally perpetuated prejudices such as those so deftly displayed on this discussion board, they keep quiet. I think you may be even more surprised at who is gay among the real people you know let alone fictional characters.
The way some people (happily it seems, the minority) have instantly turned against the series, its message and author is so very telling – the death eater analogy fits so perfectly – it’s almost planned that way. This deep seated, pathological hatred of anything as inconsequential as sexuality is more telling of the sickness of society than its morality. Once homosexuality was considered a mental illness – soon hatred of it will take its place in the DSMIV as a pathological irrationality – soon may that day come so you guys can get some treatment.
“This comment board wouldnt even have 49 pages if she said he was happily married and had 3 children with a woman. Thats what makes this so wrong.”
It was wrong for her to mention Albus was gay? Or wrong of people to get upset about it? Guess she should have just answered the question, “Well, I can’t tell you, because it’ll offend people. In fact, I really shouldn’t have written the books at all, because some people will think I’m promoting witchcraft. Actually, what am I even doing on stage? Some people get offended when women aren’t barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen!” or maybe she should’ve just lied and changed her character’s personality to something less offensive to some. Because we all know that the moral of Jo’s stories is that you should never, ever offend people by telling the truth.
And to the love the sinner, hate the sin crowd, we have no evidence that the Dumbledore/Grindewald relationship was ever any more phyical than the Snape/Lily one; so here’s your chance to love the sinner – even though I think it more of a sin to hate people who live or think differenty than you do.
Meissa, I was saying its wrong for people to get upset about it!! Re-read the comments before you post one.
I actually think this was a good move on her part because now we wont have hypocrits around us saying they love the series and its moral values when they are bigots themselves.
“As far as the David and Jonathan relationship is concerned, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that their relationship was sexual, and several reasons, some of which I have mentioned, to believe that it was not.”
That is only as YOU read the story. I read several reasons to believe they DID have a sexual relationship. However, given they died a few thousand years ago if they ever lived, what does it matter….that is my point. You overlay YOUR perceptions on things just as I overlay mine.
But buddy, if you think being gay is only about the sex, I got 52 years of living it to tell you different. So don’t intellectualize my life and make broad sweeping generalizations. Glad you have close male friendships and all but if you ain’t gay you don’t know beans about what it means to be gay. I tell you to sit here and read some or the rubbish you people toss out really depresses me. Until I see all the people cheer Jo on and stand up for the imaginary old gay man! That makes the real one feel pretty good
This is hilarious. I am hoping the insanity is just because the internet is so full of people who long to be heard rather than listen.
Im leaving before one of these Deatheaters puts the AK or Cruciatus curse on me for defending whats right. All I have to say is that this the sadest comments board I have seen in all the years Ive been a part of the HP Community and I hope that this will rid us of all the people that dont deserve to be here and call us their friends to our face and talk smack behind our backs for what we know if right. Its NOT right to talk bad about someone when you dont even understand what they are. I feel sorry for your children and hope they pick up an HP book one day and realize what kind of people you are and stand up to you. Sometimes out of the mouth of babes people can truely see how they really act.
My dad died of complications from a heart attack on Thursday so I’ve been a wreck. Yesterday while I was having breakfast with my best friend as we ran errands to the funeral home and grocery store my sister called me to tell me that Dumbledore was gay. I laughed so hard because my dad would have been thoroughly amused at the potential reaction of the Harry Potter book burners. I needed information like this so badly. Thank you, Jo.