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If Ms. Rowling says Dumbeldore was gay, well, then he was since she created the character in her books. But I am glad his sexuality was not a part of the story. Teenage sex was never an issue with the Harry Potter books so why all the fuss about Dumbeldore? Sex of any kind really had nothing to do with the books. They are mostly fantasy so why bring in sexual reality?

As a Christian I see the Harry Potter series as purely entertainment for much of what is portrayed is Biblically forbidden. Some of the scenes I would not let my children read or watch if they were very young. How young? I don’t know and do not have to deal with it since they are 31 and 27 now. Maybe under 12?

I think what Beckett said was very lovely, its true she showed us many was to love, and Dumbledore story had nothing to do with the books so it really doesnt matter. For those who dont understand why some of us cant fully except gays and lesbians- you have to remember that it was something that was drilled in our heads since we were little that it is not ok for two men or two women to be sexually orientated- so that is why it is so difficult, because of what we were raised to believe we cant just all of a sudden turn around after so many centuries and say ok thats alright for them to do that. Some religions may believe it okay and others see it as not okay. I happen to be Roman Catholic, Im not strongly against it or for it.

Thanks BellaSnape. I’m right there with you. I’m Roman Catholic and was raised going to church every Sunday. Heck this Sunday I’ll be at mass getting ready to be teary for Palm Sunday. But a person’s sexuality is none of my business just as who I date is none of theirs.

Dumbledore to me, is just a great guy who did a lot of wonderful things. Heck I wish he was a real guy who I could go hang out with tomorrow instead of going to class. Since he’s not I’ll have to settle for hanging out with JKR and Michael Gambon if I ever get the chance. And when I do I’ll hug them both. JKR for creating a character in a series who I loved so much I wanted him to be MY grandfather and Michael Gambon for doing such a wonderful job portraying Dumbledore after I believed no one could take my beloved Richard Harris’s place.

And if it upsets you to know he’s gay then shut your eyes and ears and pretend it’s not true. Heck it works for a lot of other things.

Rowling ´s so called ideas are identically with the official Labour Party program. She speaks like a politician. Blablablabla. No wonder Gordon Brown is a good friend of her. Let all human beings become Labour voting Britons and the world will be rescued.

Heck I wish he was a real guy who I could go hang out with tomorrow

Wow… Really? Really, and you have read the final book from beginning to end? I know this sounds like a horrible rhetorical question but I’m really really not. I’m asking out of truly heart-felt curiousity here. And, if it’s all right for me to ask you (or anybody here who totally agrees with beckett and doesn’t mind telling me), what is your age? Mine’s 27 and I don’t have a child, so maybe that disqualifies me for the way the books are truly supposed to be read?

I’m really not trying to put your or anybody’s reading into question here but rather mine. Because I read the whole series and came out feeling that I would run like away like my backside was on fire if I ever found myself in a close relationship, never mind friendship, with a person similar to Professor Dumbledore in terms of personality. Where on earth did I go wrong? We both read the same book and got completely opposite impressions, that’s truly mysterious to me…

“D-Dore’s gay, but he’s the safe kind! The kind that doesn’t have sex! So it’s ok,, people.” Way to be, woman, way to be. She just keeps tangeling herself up more and more in these interviews, and one day, she’s going to fall so flat on her face that not even her most devoted fans will be able to cover. Enough, Rowling. You’ve had your fifteen minutes, honey, now stop trying to control every single aspect of people’s imaginations.

Harp: If I follow your logic, it would be fine for Dumbledore to be gay if he was in a relationship, but the fact that he wasn’t makes it wrong?

I think you’ve missed the point. You need to ask yourself WHY Dumbledore had no relationships. Was it necessary to his character, or was it in an effort to “make him safe”. (I find that completely ridiculous by the way.)

Dumbledore has no relationships because he was hurt once and doesn’t want to be hurt again. It scared him that being in love blinded him to what Grindelwald was really capable of, and it ended up costing his sister her life. That added up to a deep emotional wound. That’s who his character is, and it would change the story tremendously if it were different.

Would Dumbledore have just needed to be in a relationship to make it all right? Perhaps Flitwick should have been gay, then…forget it. :-)

On a related note, as far as I know, and I might be mistaken, there are only two Hogwarts faculty/staff members who are married that we are aware of, Phineas Nigellus and Neville Longbottom, one of them in the past, and one in the future. So, Dumbledore isn’t in a relationship any more than the rest of the staff, at least as far as we know.

That is something I really hope JKR answers in the Scottish Book, I would like to know more about all the teacher’s families.

First off Bellasnape and Beckett I can completely respect your views and appreciate that you make the issue you have with DD being gay your own problem instead of blaming JK for it. Rasin_gal if you have something to say just say it. Your going around and around about not wanting to know the greatest man in modern literture but not giving a reason why. Is because hes gay, or what he put Harry through, or what? Noone can answer your question if you done make it clear what your talking about. And Harp you need to reread the interview. JK did not sound in anyway try to be “safe”. She said he led a celibate life after Grindlewald because he realized what he had done. He was 1 ashamed of himself for believing in the views of racial dominance, he was probably completely heart broken over the relationship, etc. Why is that playing it safe??? There are tons of people out there who stay away from love out of fear, both gay and straight. There are tons of people out there who fall in love once and never have another relationship again in their lives, both gay and straight. There was nothing in ANY of her interviews that insinuates that she’s trying to play it safe or gather publicity for herself. We’re talking about a billionare who struggles to actually live a normal life!! Just because DD did not consumate the relationship or have anymore relationships after Grindlewald doesnt mean hes not gay. Hes still gay and she’ll never be able to change that. She made him that way and thats how she created him. A kind, loving, wise, great gay wizard. And thats how we should accept him. It doesnt change who he is or what he’s done in the books.

Having read some of the admittedly strange comments on this board, I feel I should clear something up with regards to JKR both as an outsider and as the writer of this interview – perhaps the sentiment did not come across due to the obviously static nature of a written interview.

As far as I can recollect, and as far as my dictaphone relates, this is not a big deal. This is an organic part of the character. The expression behind it was that most people have experienced unrequited love and the damage it can do, yet we all choose to deal with it in different ways. For Dumbledore, his blind love meant that he almost compromised his entire belief system – a fact he realised later. Anyone who has experienced such a feeling knows how it is possible to scare oneself by the sheer lengths you are willing to go to in order to claim that love.

Whether that love is for a male or female, or at all consummated, is entirely irrelevant. JKR has not ‘sanitised’ Dumbledore in any way – in fact quite the opposite. She has made Dumbledore a much more human, much more relatable and much more accessible character to an outsider like myself, and certainly to any mature reader who can empathise with such characteristics.

I hope that clears things up.

Adeel

PS. For anyone struggling to read the scans, there will be PDFs uploaded on my website soon (www.adeelamini.com); similarly there’s an untrimmed version of the interview, about 7000+ words so double the length of this one, floating around on Facebook which you can find on this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adeel-Amini/21764285594. Enjoy.

Ah, Adeel, how good that you wrote that.

The feeling I got when JKR broke the news about DD’s sexuality was that suddenly he became THe Gay Character, and all his magical achievements for good or for bad and the importance of his thoughts and actions in the story were suddenly absolutely unimportant compared to this little snippet of backstory about his sexuality. Anyway it made a few gay people pretty grumpy – somehow they were claiming DD’s gayness for themselves and therefore being p*ssed off because his gayness wasn’t portrayed in the most positive way. (Actually, it wasn’t portrayed at all, remember). Thus making exactly the same mistake as every sensationalist; of forgetting that DD is a rounded character in a huge book, in which sexuality and sexual orientation takes a back seat. DD has a zillion other important things to do, plot-wise, before being the prototype for positive sexuality education.

I agree that this makes DD more real- he didn’t trust his own judgment about love anyw more, not because he’d loved a man but because he’d loved an EVIL man. Actually he makes another mistake out of love (though not the sexual kind) when he tries to protect Harry by not telling him about the prophecy before the end of Book 5. It is about the love, not the sex, and about flawed characters, regardless of their sexuality. In fact the only more directly sexual instances I see in the books are in my opinion rather funny and slightly ridiculous – Lavender and Won-won, Harry’s chest monster, Fleur feeding Bill etc. Not the major plot-points.

To draw a parallel: people have also complained about the lack of influential female figures – I find that all the female figures are well rounded and interesting, but yeah, most of the movers and shakers in the wizarding world are guys. Like in the muggle world. If she made it too different and egalitarian, I doubt we could identify with it so much. Crying about Dumbledore’s celibacy seems to me like gratuitous nit-picking.

Yes he’s still gay and many muggles still have a problem with it for some reason. And being raised a certain way only accounts for your behavior until you get to an age where you start thinking for yourself.

I’m more interested in the “Scottish Book.” I’m sure work started on it with the first book. We know there’s a whole bunch of notes and portions of book that were discarded or edited out. As for the wait we have: she can take as long as she needs. I want this thing to be everything I imagined.

It’s like with the new GTA game which has been delayed over and over again. People get upset about it but if it’s really going to be THAT much better than the last (San Andreas: perhaps my favorite game of all time), they can take as long as they want.

You know what I am more interested in—the little hint she’s peppered in on what would potentially come. That she may write a book about Albus Severus in 10 years time so all things Potter are not lost!!!

And of course our beloved Scottish Book :) I wonder if she’s feeling pressured to do something about it now because of the nasty Lexicon business. :( I feel sad for her, dammit, the woman needs a break!!

Adeel,

Thank you for stepping into this discussion

I’m afraid that I may not be as eloquent or as clear as others might be talking on this issue, but I also feel there are things which need to be said. In the understanding that there are far more able commentators who may hopefully express these issues better than I can later, there are a couple of points I’d like to address.

For some of us, Dumbledore being gay was a bigger deal than it was to others. I don’t demand that you agree with how important it was, but I would ask for anyone reading this to try to accept and understand that for some people it does matter more than for others.

From the point of view of the books – within the narrative universe – the gender of the person whom Dumbledore loved is incidental. I get that. Wizard/Witch/Muggle/Goat, it’s not that important.

But the published books, and these interviews, exist in a world where it is not universally accepted that love is love, regardless of gender. It exists in a world where people who are gay struggle every day with intolerance (and some choose celibacy rather than have to deal with that). It exists in a world where fifteen year old boys are murdered because their classmates have learned to fear homosexuality. It exists in a world where gay people seldom see depictions of people like them on TV or in books. And it exists in a world where declaring DD to be gay caused international headlines. (You can argue that it’s stupid for it to be headline news, and I’d agree, but anyone with any sort of understanding of how the media works can hardly be surprised that such information was publicised and politicised the way it was.)

I’m not looking for HP to be the battle ground where we finally get equallity. I get that it’s “just a children’s book”. But a lot of the ideas and stereotypes against which gay people have to fight come from TV and popular literature. And while celibacy may do little harm for the character of DD in the books, it’s adding to the stock pile of the trope of the Safe Celibate Gay™. Such stereotypes are often easily defended on a one by one basis, but one has to be aware of the harm they do when constantly reiterated.

I know you’re not a Potterhead yourself, so I’d also like to explain another bit of the context. HP has a huge following – larger than any other work ever, I think – of fans who discuss, and even write fiction about the characters and their love lives. (Strange, but true.) There are no other out gay characters in the HP books. There are lots and lots and lots of heterosexual relationships. With almost every interview she gives, JKR seems to list further heterosexual marriages.

Isn’t it just a little bit unbalanced that the only character she’s willing to decisively declare gay is also the one whom she sees very firmly as being celibate?

I do understand that for JKR this really isn’t a big deal. I believe 100% that she was speaking from the best of motives. However, I would also argue that just because it’s not a big deal for her, doesn’t mean that it’s not problematic for others.

Nema

(PS. Thank you sincerely for this conducting this interview and for making it available to us.)

Raisin_gal – I’m 21 years old and I don’t mind saying so. And yes I’d love to hang out with Dumbledore. He’s a great man who did a many great things, no matter what mistakes he may have made along the road (and I don’t consider his sexuality a mistake). I wouldn’t want someone to not want to hang out with me because when I was 17 I screwed up.

Your sexuality does not define who you are. It doesn’t depict what decisions you make as far as the rest of your life. It defines one small aspect – the sex of the person you happen to fall in love with. How you love, you ability to help others, your career…everything else in your life is not controlled by your sexuality. Just because I’m straight doesn’t mean that I’m going to turn out to be a good person in the end. Look at all the straight people who turned out to be horrible individuals?

To me, what someone’s sexuality is doesn’t matter. It may mean that we could never have a romantic relationship but big deal. It doesn’t mean that we can’t have a relationship. Dumbledore was one amazing person who did amazing things. And heck yeah I’d want to hang out with him. I’d sit down with him, have some tea and talk about… I don’t know candy. It doesn’t matter. I want to hang out with him because of the amazing accomplishments that he did, for the fact that overall he was a good person. Not because he’s gay or straight.

I’m sorry if you can’t see past his sexuality. That saddens me. It’s going to block off a lot of wonderful people from your life. Look at all the amazing real people out there who aren’t straight. I’d still love to hang out with Jodie Foster, Elton John, Victor Garber and a slew of others. I don’t care who they date, who they love. That doesn’t define who they are.

I’m rotflolling at this thread. I don’t recall any significant criticism of JKR when it seemed like her books didn’t have ANY gay characters – but now that her stories have a gay character, she’s getting dissed because he’s not being gay IN THE RIGHT WAY. Several posters have decried the ‘celibate old queen’ stereotype – how do you think that makes all the REAL celibate old queens feel? Disenfranchised much?

Consider that a) there’s not any right way to be gay OR straight, whether it’s in real life or fiction; and b) rather than criticising JKR for not putting the right type of gay character in the right way in her series of fantasy novels for children, try writing your own story and characterising homosexuals the way you think they should be characterised.

Oh, and to the poster (was it steve something?) a few pages ago who said readers wouldn’t have accepted a fictional universe where more gender equality existed, I completely disagree and am very dismayed by your opinion. We’ve come a long way, baby; you, on the other hand, have some catching up to do.

Medea,

1. The fact that you never came across criticism of the lack of gay characters in HP doesn’t mean nobody was making it.

2. I’d imagine celibate old queens are themselves rather irritated at having become a stereotype. And I can’t see how it’s disenfranchising to point out the trope. Nobody’s said they want a petition to ban all representations of celibate gay men. The problem is when it becomes stereotype, and when it’s thrown in without any consideration of the sort of issues which lead people to identify as gay, but choose celibacy.

3. Do you tell film critics that if they don’t like a movie they should just make one themselves? Do you really believe that all negative criticism is invalid, or just that which offends your sensibilities?

Not that I want to go there but maybe what Dumbledore felt when he was 17 yrs old for Grindlewald is the same feeling that some of us girls get when we like say – Helena as Bellatrix or, the guys get when they like Alan as Snape- doesnt really mean that we “want” them. We just are in a fan like matter infatuated with them- and boy I miss the days when gay meant “happy”. I was never around but things would be much simpiler.

This is a very loaded subject.

I mean, a book about stand-up comedians? Before she finishes the Scottish Book?

But seriously. I’d like to attempt to explain from a personal standpoint why Dumbledore’s orientation matters so much to some fans.

For years I have been sure J.K Rowling condemns homophobia- take Dudley’s comment to Harry at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix- “Who’s he, your boyfriend?” If Dudley insulted Harry with homophobic slurs, that meant JKR considered homophobia bad.

However, I never really hoped for JKR to ‘out’ a character. Even if she never intended any of her characters to be gay, I would have loved the books just as much. They are based loosely on the real world. I doubt she calculated from statistics how many people of various religions, how many ethnic minorities and gay minorities she should send to Hogwarts, and then wrote them in.

The books aren’t meant to be a direct representation of our reality and our social woes. The wizarding world’s struggle is a metaphor advocating the fight for tolerance and for making the right moral choices in ours, the readers’, world.

So why does it matter so much that Dumbledore is gay? Growing up with often only unrealistic media portrayals of what a gay person is like, I (and many friends) longed to have a ‘normal’ character in our favorite book series who happened to also be gay. Many, many gay people look and act exactly like straight people and are indistinguishable from them save for whom they love. It is discouraging to see the public stereotypes of our lives. News of Dumbledore’s sexuality was uplifting to me because his sexuality wasn’t the focus. He was not the ‘gay character.’ He was a strong, good, wise, but flawed character.

To those on the message board who say “Too little, too late” (as many of my friends have): I sympathize. However, were any of you expecting better, really? To me, Dumbledore’s celibacy after Grindelwald is quite sad, but it seems fitting with his character. Perhaps the stereotype of the celibate old man exists because there was historic reason for it. After all, wizards don’t seem more tolerant than Muggles, and a gay man in Victorian times was hardly likely to come out.

To those that say, “But this makes it about SEX! Gay sex! Dumbledore’s sexuality is about SEX! Harry and Ginny are about LOVE and are meant to be!” Clue in: ALL infatuations are about love and physical attraction. Neither orientation, straight or gay, is more about sex than the other.

My apologies for any gross overgeneralizations. I’m trying to respond to several topics I see in this thread.

Hmm, maybe some of us were upset because of Dumbledore being gay! First of all, I just don’t see him that way. Second of all, I am one of many Albus/Minerva supporters! MMAD forever!

Ella, I don’t think you read my post very carefully.

“Medea,

1. The fact that you never came across criticism of the lack of gay characters in HP doesn’t mean nobody was making it.”

I didn’t say I never came across criticism. I said I didn’t recall any SIGNIFICANT criticism.

You missed my point, which was that the critics of the way AD was portrayed, by identifying him as a stereotypical celibate old queer, are themselves stereotyping.

3. Do you tell film critics that if they don’t like a movie they should just make one themselves? Do you really believe that all negative criticism is invalid, or just that which offends your sensibilities?

**I’m not answering straw-man or ad hominem arguments, sorry. Come back with something more accurate and we can talk.