I love Harry Potter. I've been reading it ever since I was in the 7th grade, and now I'm a junior in college! So a lot of my late adolescence and early adulthood included some amount of Harry Potter fanaticism.
I'm suprised that Dumbledore is gay, but it doesn't bother me or anything. Obviously if JK says he's gay, he's gay. It's her character no matter what proof is given or not. I would like to see some support from the book just for some extra insight and to say "Oh I see now".

I'm sure the religious wackos are going to brew up something and we'll hear about it for a few weeks and roll our eyes at it, but I don't think it will create any more noise than what's already coming from that lot. And eventually people will just be like, whatever.

I have to admit, I was ecstatic when JKR announced Dumbledore was gay, and had at least one anecdote to prove that it wasn't something she said on a whim (she made the screenwriter's omit a line in the sixth movie that had Dumbledore referring to an old girlfriend).

However, yes, she had seven freaking huge long books in which to state this fact. And it could have been stated in a way that didn't make it "A Very Special Episode." In book 7 we find out Dumbledore's past - couldn't even Rita Skeeter have dropped some salacious hint of Dumbledore's feelings for Grindelwald (she did intimate that Dumbledore and Harry had an inappropriate relationship...but that comes way too close to equating homosexuality to pedophilia if you ask me to count as a positive portrayal of Dumbledore's sexuality).

For the most part, I think JKR needs to stop talking about the books. Stop giving interviews, go live quietly for a few months. While I'm glad that she thought about Dumbledore's sexuality, and was open about it when she was finally asked about his love life, most of the trivia she drops a) isn't important or b) contradicts something she said in a previous post-DH interview.

Well he did like to knit...

For the most part, I think JKR needs to stop talking about the books. Stop giving interviews, go live quietly for a few months. While I'm glad that she thought about Dumbledore's sexuality, and was open about it when she was finally asked about his love life, most of the trivia she drops a) isn't important or b) contradicts something she said in a previous post-DH interview.

I am inclined to agree with this. I'm rather ambivalent about the revelation because I feel like it would have been nice to actually mention it in the books.

Eh, I'm less concerned over the fact that it was never mentioned before because honestly, none of the Hogwarts teachers ever had any indication of a sex/love life. The closest is Snape, who, we learn at the end of the last book, cherished a hopeless passion his entire life. And we only learn that because it's instrumental to the plot.

It would actually have been weird for Rowling to mention Dumbledore's sexuality in the series. I always suspected that you need to take a vow chastity as part of your Hogwarts teaching contract.

EG, I also thought it would have been weird to mention the teachers' sexuality--I assumed that was based on a students' perspective that remains pretty oblivious to the existence of teachers' personal lives. Witness how shocked they were when Hagrid and Madame Maxine hooked up. Part of that was shock that Hagrid was a half-giant, but I thought it was also just being squicked out at thinking of him with *anyone*

I don't see a big deal with her outing Dumbledore after-the-fact. Does anyone know if anyone is gay? No. Can we speculate? Sure. She didn't have to write about the Gryffindor 4th year's five-way in Goblet of Fire after the Yule Ball. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. That's why we have fanfic, to fill in the blanks.

Aww, yay!
I admit, most of the characters inHP are heteronormative, and also, they got married at pretty much nineteen.
So it is rather strange that only one of them is gay.
And, he's dead. Unfortunately. It's nice she admitted it, but it's also kind of annoying there's a big fuss over it.
If she'd said, "Dumbledore is straight', there'd be a lot less 'OMG'! It's because of the heteronormativity that's pretty much preached throughout the books.

IMO, Peter made a good point about this at the Pandagon thread:

Most prejudice regarding sexual orientation is clearly linked with rigid sex-role normativity and percieved gender appropriateness. In a subculture where the women and girls are just as likely as the men and boys to be warriors, Quidditch players, government ministers, highly placed school officials, etc, a lot of the basis for hostility just goes away. It may be that Harry didn’t focus on any of the tertiary characters’ sexualities because it never occured to him to care.

Still, you see a lot of the same when it comes to the families in the books: One mom, one dad, and one or more wizardlings happily together. No room for homosexuality or divorce, it would seem, as if either is necessarily a bad thing.

Yeah, you could say her approach to sexuality is "frightening," but I still have to give her credit for creating co-ed Quiddich teams, no questions asked.

I have never been read the Harry Potter books. What's interesting is that it is such a huge pop culture monster. JK Rowling can make an offhand comment about Dumbledore's sexuality at a book reading and the news spreads around the world.

FIRST, I must post this link.
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b58/Roxie21/PEOPLE_dumbledore_ImGay.jpg

There are quite a few points to be made..

I love the fact she outed him and the rush for alot of freaked out ppl to "unread" and "unlove" Dumby.

The stories are told FOR children, from a child's perspective which would NOT include his professor's sexuality or lack thereof.

It could've been told through Rita Skeeter, but Dumby was SO damn secretive, I don't think anyone would've known and for him to tell anyone would've been very much out of character.

I do think there are hints. It all makes sense...Dumby's flamboyant dress, his blindness to Grindy's evil, etc.

The stories are told FOR children, from a child's perspective which would NOT include his professor's sexuality or lack thereof.

Eh, the books cover kids from the age of 11 to 18. By the time I was 12, we were passing rumors back and forth about our teachers sexual/romantic lives. It's not like Harry et al were 5.

We never did. We were always shocked to realize they had lives.

There's a point in book 6 where JKR refers to Dumbledore's "flamboyantly cut suit of purple velvet" or some such thing. I remember reading that and thinking to myself, "right... or you could wrap him in a rainbow flag." After that point I always thought he was gay, and when I read the last book I read the duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald as some variation of a lover's quarrel. Then I thought I was going nuts and seeing the gay wherever I looked. Turned out I'm not nuts. Awesome!

What I love most about this is that the wingnuts are going to freak out about it. Not only do the HP books promote witchcraft, now they promote homosexuality too! And how incomprehensible that Dumbledore spent all that time alone with Harry and never made a pass at him. /sarcasm

I agree with the idea that the kids are written, intentionally, to be somewhat blind to the sexual/romantic lives of their teachers. You'll see that they speculate here and there, if you read carefully/obsessively.

I don't think the books are frighteningly heteronormative. The Sweet Valley High Series is frighteningly heteronormative (also just plain frightening). I like that JKR wrote a number of very strong female characters: Ginny, Hermione, Tonks, even Molly Weasley in her way. In terms of healthy role models for young women, I think that HP is way better than most of what's out there.

I remember being in junior high and speculating on the love-lives of all our teachers- the history teacher who supposedly had a poster of Alicia Silverstone, the gym teacher who stared at the 6th grade girls when we did jumping jacks, the science teacher who supposedly made out with a gym teacher and who we thought masturbated in his science closet. In high school, it was the out lesbian gym teacher, the single English teacher, the recently married art teacher. I find a little strange that it never would have been a rumor passed around Hogwarts, because that is just the kind of thing kids do. It also boggles my mind that Rita Skeeter wouldn't have mentioned his sexuality- either it is something worth hiding, and therefore something she would crow about, or it was so blase and boring that it could have been mentioned in the obit. It blows my mind all the people that are saying it would have been inappropiate to have his sexuality mentioned in the book, because 1. plenty of characters had a heterosexual background explicitly mentioned by the author 2. our sexuality shapes us as people 3. Mentioning a past relationship with one gender or another is not the same as a "Dumbledore had lots of steamy buttsecks" type Penthouse story. Acknowledging that someone is gay is not about sex, people.

I hear that Jen. My only point was that all the Hogwarts teachers--not any other adults--were more or less presented as monks. There was never any reference to an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend of McGonagall's (I lean toward ex-girlfriend myself), or of Sprout's, or of Flitwick's, or of Mad-Eye Moody's (though I have my opinions on that last). It would have been completely anomalous to even mention an ex- or any romantic interest at all.

I sort of wonder, also...though this is pure speculation...Dumbledore was old. Really, really old. Now, certainly there are out, loud, and proud older gay people, but I just read an article in the NYT about the troubles faced by aging gay men and women, and the article emphasized that many of these people come from a generation in which being closeted was just the norm.

I don't know, that's pure speculation, because Dumbledore doesn't really exist, he doesn't have a generation, etc.

It's interesting, even in the world of Harry Potter fan fiction, Dumbledore is not usually depicted as gay (he is often paired with Minerva McGonagall). Pretty much any other character has been paired with a member of the same sex in fan fiction. It's not all that surprising to me, though. It adds up, and I'm pleased that JK had Dumbledore be a positive role model throughout the books.

She didn't think it would be a big deal. She didn't see delving into Dumbledore's sexuality and possible sexual past as adding to the storyline. But in amongst all the various things SHE knew about her characters that didn't make it into the books was this piece of information.

To be honest, it seems like real life to me. Sometimes these things just don't come up, and just don't matter, in the interactions you have with a person. There are always lots of things about a person that we might not know. And to me it just reinforces the idea that gays are just people like the rest of us (that's a positive for me).

Rebecca Traister has a piece on Salon in which she quotes everything that indicates Dumbledore and Grindelwald were more than buddies. Traister is quite critical of Rowling's post-book revelations in general. As for the info, it's not blatant, and it's a bit ambiguous, but then, you never really hear about the sexuality of any of the teachers in the book, except for Hagrid's infatuation with Madame Maxime. Sorry that I'm not posting the link--for some reason, I can't get onto Salon right now.

Rebecca Traister has a piece on Salon in which she quotes everything that indicates Dumbledore and Grindelwald were more than buddies. Traister is quite critical of Rowling's post-book revelations in general. As for the info, it's not blatant, and it's a bit ambiguous, but then, you never really hear about the sexuality of any of the teachers in the book, except for Hagrid's infatuation with Madame Maxime. Sorry that I'm not posting the link--for some reason, I can't get onto Salon right now.

On the one hand, I like that JK rowling envisioned a character as gay. On the other hand, if that he is gay doesn't become apparent from reading the book, what use is it to us as readers? lemme know what you think.

I must admit, Deathly Hallows would have been an appropriate time to have revealed Dumbledore's sexuality. After all, in that book Harry is no longer a student; he's learning to regard his former teachers as being closer to equals.

There does remain the question of how it would have been brought up, though, and how the rest of the wizarding world regards homosexuality. I do get the impression that the real scandal wouldn't have been Dumbledore being attracted to another man, but him being attracted to a Dark Wizard.

Still, you see a lot of the same when it comes to the families in the books: One mom, one dad, and one or more wizardlings happily together. No room for homosexuality or divorce, it would seem, as if either is necessarily a bad thing.

Harry doesn't have parents. He was raised by what one would consider the perfect family superficially, but they're actually real a-holes. Neville was raised by his grandmother because his parents were tortured to insanity, and he turned out fine. Luna was raised by her father because her mother died in a freak accident, and she turned out fine too. Dean Thomas doesn't know who his father is let alone whether he's a Muggle or a wizard, and he turned out fine. The only traditional family in the series that we really get to know are the Weasleys, and how traditional is a husband/father in a crappy job and a wife/mother who plays a huge role in the battle against Voldemort?

Personally, I'm a little disappointed in this "revelation". I've spelled out the reasons on my own blog (http://www.seeworthy.org/2007/10/20/is-dumbledore-being-gay-really-such-a-great-thing/), but I'm pretty tired of authors tossing in a gay character (either literally or after-the-fact) with zero textual gay relationships who die tragically alone. The Children's Hour, anyone? Really, we've been there, done that. It's great if she just "envisioned" him as a 'mo from the beginning, but why the heck aren't any of the many, many other characters gay as well? Why don't we find that Neville had a happy queer relationship with one of the other boys, or that Percy became very popular among the wizards at the ministry?

Bah. I still love the series, but I really expected more sense from her.

I think Madame Hooch is gay.

But also, to get into each and every adult's sexuality would've made it a completely different book. Maybe if it had been told from one of the adult's p.o.v. we'd know more?

Here's that Salon article mentioned earlier..
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/23/dumbledore/

sorry, call me jaded, but i'm a huge hp fan anyway and i just can't help but think rowling is whoring for press at this point with the post-book announcements.

it doesn't matter to me either way if she intended dumbledore to be gay the entire time, although i agree that it would have been nice to bring it up at some point.

Who cares! I never picked up a Harry Potter book, and if someones gay-who gives a -----!
However, the controversy this is creating says something about the culture we live in. I'm happy to see more homosexual characters in childrens books. I bet this will be featured on all the right-wing Bible-thumping tv shows as a new 'evil,' and something dangerous to their kids.

just fyi jkr is currently working on an encyclopedia of background information about all the scondary/tertiary characters. i think that lends more relevance to her "post-book revelations." it makes me more convinced that she knows her characters well enough to know if they're gay or not—and not that she's just determining it after the fact to be PC.

also, it seems completely out of character to me for dumbledore to ashamed and closeted about his sexuality. i can see him thinking that it was private and not relevant to the matters at hand (which it wasn't), but i couldn't ever see him being closeted about it no matter how old he is.

Meh. I'm still rather upset that the Sirius and Remus thing was implied, then seemingly brushed aside in favor of Remus marrying a woman for some reason. (not that male bisexuality is impossible, it just seemed like a "see, he's not gay!" move out of nowhere)

I can absolutely see gay!Albus. Something about his relationship to Snape suggests a kind of understanding that makes sense in light of recent revelations involving, respectively, Grindelwald and Lily.

As a closet writer, I tend to think of my characters as real people. They exist in the alternate reality of my brain. There are often things about them which serve no narrative purpose but nonetheless identify them.

So I can sympathise with Rowling, who likely wanted to avoid having people easily mistake Dumbledore's fondness for Harry as inappropriate. If you spent as much time on DeviantArt as I did... well.

So I can imagine this sense of him guiding her writing of him, but her never really finding a way of working it in without it feeling forced.

awkward sentences...

Cola, I absolutely agree. Whenever we were constructing characters for scenes in class or for actual shows (I majored in theatre), we constructed a complete character. If my director or an audience member during the talk-backs wanted to know some random piece of information about my character, I didn't make it up on the fly. I knew it. I knew who my character's first kiss was, what her favorite color was, her favorite food, whether she believes in God, all of the things that make a person who they are, regardless of whether it's implied in the script or has any bearing on the plot.

Rowling said Dumbledore was gay, b/c he was. When she created the character, she didn't imagine a flat character, she had a person in mind. I bet she could tell you what his favorite color was, or if he's allergic to dogs, but that's because he's her character, not b/c she wants to make something up after the fact. And upon reading this news, it made sense. I can't imagine Dumbledore with a woman. It doesn't fit with what I know from the books. That's why we create a full person for the characters we play, b/c if it an action doesn't fit the character's life before the play, it will ring false to the audience. They will know. I would know that it was wrong for Dumbledore to reminisce about a girlfriend; it would ring false and forced, whereas the revelation that he loved Grindewald fits perfectly and gives me so much more insight into why he held the values he did and how he became the person he was.

yes, and like cola said, the characters we create in our heads have a whole life that doesn't make the cut for the books...that is the nature of the realm of our imaginations...anything can happen there...and if it matters...if it perpetuates the story whether it be in writing or television or role-playing it comes up...if it doesn't progress the story, there is no point in pointing it out...

part of the beauty of the potter series is that it is written devoid of a lot of the themes of morality that we usually see. the series is essentially godless...not in the "not believing in god" sense, but it is completely not religious at all. even the parts of witchcraft the author explores aren't part of paganism by and traditional sense...but the only good/evil we see from anyone has nothing to do w/ powers greater than them...it is all in the individual and the choices they make. we can see that in how easily the characters of voldemort and harry, who had essentially the same choices laid before them, could have taken each other's road. even the former chose his own fate in his impatience, and marked his equal as one child, when it could easily have been another...

why should the topic of sexuality be any different? if it didn't matter to the forward momentum of the story, then there was no reason to bring it up. we only know about the adults what was needed...what was obvious from the children's point of view. possibly, if rowling had brought obvious attention to dumbledore being gay it is quite possible that the religious opposition would have attacked the series for making some statement about catholic priests, w/ him being the head of a specialized exclusive school and having an "inappropriate realationship" w/ one of his students. the author avoided all of that. plus, i don't know about all of you, but the homosexual people that i know don't wear signs, and it isn't common knowledge to anyone, not b/c it is some scandelous secret, but b/c at the end of the day, it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. they aren't gay people...they are people. and they happen to be gay.

no matter what the religious crazies say these books are excellent lessons in morality, b/c it teaches the most important part of it, that we are all responsible for ourselves. we are born w/ certain characteristics and things about us, but we are all people. some of us have brown eyes, some of us have huge feet, and some of us are gay. i don't see my freakishly wide feet being important to anyone but me. by the same token i don't walk around telling people "hey, i am a heterosexual!" not the same thing i know...but i think i am making my point. sometimes things come up, sometimes they don't. i have a dear friend that i known for about four years, and i didn't know he was bi until last year. it just didn't matter.

sorry...hopefully now that i ranted here i can continue to resist ranting about it on my own blog...maybe not...

Like many others, I think it would have been better for her to reveal this in Deathly Hallows-- there would have been ample opportunity in the "Kings Cross" chapter-- Dumbledore could have simply referred to the fact that he was in love with Grindelwald; he didn't need to say "Oh guess what Harry? I like guys!" or anything like that-- he just had to acknowledge that he'd had those feelings for someone who happened to be another man. (Of course, many of us interpreted it that way anyway).

HOWEVER, I'm still enormously happy that Rowling announced this at all. Of course it doesn't make Harry Potter into a bastion of anti-heteronormative discourses, but given the stifling heteronormativity of the series as a whole, knowing that one rather major character was gay makes me a lot happier with the whole HP universe.

Rowling has, in her most recent Toronto book reading, said that as a result of her announcement about Dumbledore, a man came out right there at Carnegie Hall. And honestly, if her announcement made just one person feel that they could be more comfortable with who they are, then that's wonderful.

Oh, and for people who think she's just looking for attention: Rowling was asked specifically if Dumbledore had ever fallen in love. It's not like she just randomly said "Oh Dumbledore's gay, LOOK AT ME."

dontboxsarah-
I agree. In the Deathly Hallows, Harry began to realize how little he knew about Dumbledore, and how anytime they talked, it was always about Harry and never about Dumbledore (and his past). Since the books are written from his point of view, it makes sense that we never knew that, because Dumbledore never told Harry about that, or really anything about himself (besides his favorite candy).

There is a reason for never including Dumbledore's sexuality in the novels in a more overt way. Had she done that, the novels would have become classified as a gay/lesbian text and put in the gay/lesbian literature section. Now some, like myself, would have read them regardless, but how mainstream would they have been? (And I'm not talking about profit.) Rather than have the books judged for the sexuality of one character, she presented them without that information which in turn allowed the readers/public to have a blind eye, or a lack of knowledge. In turn - after people have developed an attachment to the characters, they learn that one is gay. I think this sequence of events ensures MUCH more acceptance than labeling characters by their sexuality. It doesn't mean she wasn't addressing it but that it wasn't the most important issue, same as characters whose race isn't addressed. Further, the experience of growing up with the characters and developing an attachment then finding out one of them is gay is similar to reality and the experience children and readers will have in life. I think it definitely teaches acceptance and understanding.

Goddamn it! I am not a fan of the Potter series (don't kill me), but we already how much shit Potter books are getting from the religious right. This revealation about Dumbodore (spelling?) being a gay is just going to give them all the more reason to bitch.

I can see it already: "Rowling, Potter promote witchery, homosexuality, abortion, feminism."

There is a reason for never including Dumbledore's sexuality in the novels in a more overt way. Had she done that, the novels would have become classified as a gay/lesbian text and put in the gay/lesbian literature section.

Huh?
Uh, where?
At the library or the bookstore? Just because a book has a gay character doesn't mean that it automatically gets classified as LGBTQ literature. I can think of a number of books that involve LGBTQ characters- sometimes the main character- that aren't:
Rubyfruit Jungle, any of Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Rules of Attraction, Maurice, The Picture of Dorian Gray, to name a few.

I don't object to the revelation that Dumbledore is gay, but I agree with the people who think that this was a lousy way of reveiling that. She had seven books to deal with it and state it. The argument that the books were "for children" doesn't hold water to me- sure, they started off as children's books, but the target audience aged as the books went on. The last book, when so much of Dumbledore's past was shown, was a perfectly reasonable and logical place to make his sexuality known.

Meh.

Whoever said she should just stop talking about the books gets a big "right on!" from me. First she drops the ball on the goblin issue, now this?