Let’s get this out of the way: I really, honestly, truly do not give a good goddamn if Dumbledore is gay. He’s a fictional character, the author is getting a little too freakily obsessive over her characters, and it doesn’t affect me one way or the other how the character swings. So Rowling says he’s gay. Eh. Move on.
It only gets interesting when a certain ID proponent who has weebled on about how delightfully Christian the Harry Potter books are hears that her imaginary character imaginarily experiences arousal over another imaginary character who is, imaginarily, of the same sex as he is. This prompts an immediate long outburst declaring that Dumbledore is NOT Gay! That would conflict with his perception that the books are Christian allegory, and as everyone knows, no true Christian could be gay, just as there are no homosexuals anywhere in Iran.
It’s more fuss over nothing. Dumbledore could have been written up as a flaming ponce who hung out in the Hogsmeade Bathhouse every weekend and did drag cabaret for fun, and you could still read Christian themes into the book, no problem. Of course, the Christian verisimilitude would have been enhanced if Dumbledore had also called the boys in to his office for regular ‘discipline’ sessions of a nature best described in off-canon fanfic, but he seems to have been free of that pedophilic poison that we find rife in ecclesiastical organizations.
As an aspiring author, I have to disagree with you here. As you write, characters take on a life of their own. At some point she had to map things like this out because it affects how the characters interact with each other – for example if he were straight, there may have been a different relationship with McGonagal. The only reason it came up was that someone asked the author in an interview.
Freakily obsessive? Oh, c’mon, all good authors have unpublished backstories for their characters. Hell, Tolkien had heaps of backstory for his whole world, including three fully functional languages with etymology. And the more Discworld you read, the more you realize that Pratchett has complicated backstories socked away for all his characters. If you’ve ever roleplayed (with a smart simulationist group) you should understand.
That link’s hilarious though. What a hissyfit. She didn’t even come up with those characters — what is it about some people? Oh yeah, raging homophobes, right. Also, those books are so not Christian. I clicked over and read why this person thinks they are, and basically it’s the same old tricks — giving credit for a whole bunch of dramatic tropes to the Christians, when it was really just Paul (and others) grabbing onto all of them to create a compelling narrative and permanent meal-ticket out of some poor guy’s life.
“The text is fixed and if she did not reveal it there, then it is not anywhere. Of course, the reader, like Rowling, is free to invent her own private meanings and expand the stories in new ways, but Rowling cannot force us to do so.
This is not different than the way I treat any book. ”
This, coming from a Christian, a faith which relies heavily on over-interpreting every line of text in the OT…
Original Sin isn’t even in the Old Testament. All of Christian theology is based off of ancient interpreters trying to make sense of funny bits of text. This guy needs some perspective.
Eh. I’d say it’s not the case that he’s gay, and not the case that he isn’t. It’s not spelled out one way or the other within the books. If Rowling had a backstory in her mind in which Dumbledore was gay, that’s fine by me, but it doesn’t imply that the character in the books was ‘really’ gay.
John Mark Reynolds better be a Biblical literalist then. Because his opinions on Xianity don’t matter, just the text.
Can these fucking Xians ever apply a thought or an idea generally? Or is everything they say and do subject to ad- and post hoc rationalisations?
Actually, my favorite Christian commentary that you hear about Harry Potter, and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, is that they are very much *non* Christian, and dangerous for Christian children to read as they mention mythical beasts, magic, sorcery and the like.
Yes, I’m aware of the obvious contradictions.
Anyone here seen Jesus Camp? Remember that disturbing woman who was leading the camp ranting to the children that if Harry Potter were alive (she neglected to mention real) he’d be put to death?
Oh, the contradictions abound.
Brian
Of COURSE Dumbledore is not gay! Don’t be silly. That would be like proposing that well-known Christian ministers could be gay.
Whatever. Dumbledore is soooo gay. If he isn’t, why else does he have that fabulous pointy hat? And how else would anyone explain his perpetual jetsetting to Narnia with his numero uno travel partner, Gandalf the Grey?
Now these Christians are doing their best to launch a character assasination campaign against fabulous wizards everywhere while, in between their sanctimonious diatribes about Sodom and protesting the funerals of the soldiers of Gondor and meetings of their Christian MMO guilds, they’re actually toe tapping with hobbits and goblins in the bathroom stalls of the Aerie Peak FP.
I’m always a little bit bugged when those nice Christians grab at every story, or the entire phenomenon of goodness, and claim it as exclusive Christian property.
It’s like someone who owns a Buick insisting on seeing everything on four wheels as a Buick. Every time a Corvette Stingray, Chevy pickup, child’s little red wagon or horse-drawn carriage passed, they’d say “Oh, look at that beautiful Buick!”
Not every story that has to do with a protagonist overcoming death is a Christian story. (I can even imagine crucifixion stories that have nothing at all to do with Christianity.) And not every example of human goodness is referential to Christian morality.
Christian stories are a very small subset of the larger universe of stories, just as Christian morality is a small special case of human morality.
If I open a door for a senior citizen, I don’t automatically become a Christian – nor am I doing it for Christian reasons – and it’s insulting to assume that I am. (People have told me “I think you must be a Christian without knowing it” five or six times in my life, and it always leaves me speechless.)
And I’d rather not hear Christians crow about “their” story every time I see a movie or read a book.
Christians: Not everything is about YOU.
…
Eww, ugg. PZ, you’re cheapening my heroes, dude. Stop it.
Get a grip folks. Dumbledore’s sexuality has nothing to do with the storyline. I’m betting Ms. Rowling is so sick of fundy-types randomly sniping at her books she figured she might as well give them something substantial to shoot at.
Well, they could still sneak in a flashback in the movie-crapification of book 7…
As Ms Rowling said, think of the fan fiction.
Of course. Pedophilia — even same-gender pedophilia — and homosexuality are not the same thing.
I don’t have time to read the article in-depth at the moment. Is it actually the case that this person is attempting to dictate to the author what a given piece by the author means/contains?
Warren, I PZ was equating those in ecclesiastical organizations with pedophiles. Those be churches, arr.
John Mark Reyonlds @ She wrote what she wrote and now it belongs to us.
Reminds me of those IDs who were claiming the authors of that Chimp gene study didn’t understand their own paper.
You’ve got love how Christians think that writing is magically detached from the writer. I suppose this what happens when you convince yourself your’ holy book was written by your’ god using the writers as “human pens”. All writing is magic then.
Azkyroth (#14):
It’s a heck of a lot easier when the author doesn’t exist.
Just… wow.
Not every story that has to do with a protagonist overcoming death is a Christian story. (I can even imagine crucifixion stories that have nothing at all to do with Christianity.)
Doesn’t one of the Aztec deities get crucified each year and come back?
I must say I like Rowling’s style, and feel we could do with more of this in literature. “Mr Rochester? TOTALLY a werewolf.”
I heard that Madeye Mooney was into shoes.
Rowling’s “backstory” for Dumbledore has already influenced what’s going to happen in the movies, so his sexuality is moving up the canon scale. It’s out of the Apocrypha and into the Writings, though only a dedicated exegete could find it in the Prophets.
Objectivists do the same thing, I’ve noticed. Any story which has the slightest thing to do with individuality and personal expression becomes an Objectivist narrative. I mean, can you honestly see Ayn Rand in The Giver?
I actually know christians who will NOT let their kids read the HP books out of fear that they teach (are you ready for this? ) WITCHCRAFT!
So their belief in one set of woo woo makes them think that this book can teach them a different type of woo woo adn they fear that.
Look, if you want to teach your kids that there is nothing to the idea of magic adn witchcraft them give them a damn wand and a feather and let them wave their stick and chant those words until they get bored. There is no better life lesson that magic doesn’t work than having them realize for themselves that that damn feather ain’t going to float up on it’s own.
Oddly enough, these same kids are allowed to watch Lord of the Rings. But trying to figure out why one set of books is good and the other is evil would be trying to apply logic and critical thought to christian thinking. And we all know how effective that is.
It’s worth noting that the linked article contains plot spoilers. Just saying.
I don’t kow, maybe I’m missing the point, but don’t authors go back to backstory their characters to help explain why those characters performed certain actions during the series?
JK’s explanation that Dumbledore is gay seemed so superfluous to me. I just can’t see how it explained a thing he did during the entire series. If Tom Sawyer being gay (and don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he was; I’m just searching for an example) suddenly explains chapters and chapters of Huck Finn, then fine, it makes sense.
What does Dumbledore being gay explain anything about the books?
The backstory about Dumbledore’s hand injury was important, as explained in Hallows. The backstory about Dumbledore’s orientation explains nothing in the series.
By the way, these Christian critics will look at ANY series you can think of, and if Good triumphed over Evil, it was a Christian series; Harry is Christ-like, Voldemort (I can say that name out loud now, since he’s dead) is like Satan, and blah blah blah. I think it’s a bunch of crap.
What? What?! You’re telling us the courtly old British gentleman who never got married and who always dressed in purple and lavender robes was… gay?!
No! No, I refuse to believe it! It simply can’t be true!
This is why the Bible holds its ground after a thousand years of scientific discovery: it’s already written and unchangeable!! Nothing we discover NOW could ever change what it says. Not even if God came down and said: “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean you to understand THAT”, could we change the Bible, because it’s already printed and packeted and shipped over to a thousand hotels around the world. Whats does an Afterword even mean, you silly, undecided, ever-changing authors of your own fictions??
And deconstructionism rears it’s ugly head in Christian apologetics too, apparently. That’s essentially what reynolds is claiming here, that he (as a Christian) can make the text of Rowling’s work mean what he wants it to mean, no matter the author’s intent. It’s a rather outmoded idea in literary criticism these days, but you still find adherents. The funny thing is, deconstructionism insists that there is no fixed message to a text, which of course negates all the other Christian reading of the series that Reynolds has done. By embracing a deconstructionist opinion he has negated his other arguments. It just goes to show how Christian apologists like this will fall for any silliness that seems to support their point, even when it ultimately makes them look like fools.
I’ll relate a quick story on this, for those of you unfamiliar with deconstructionism. My father (an English prof for over 45 years) used to tell a story about going to a Falkner conference in Oxford (Mississippi, that is) while Falkner was still alive. At one of the panel sessions, someone presented a paper on an aspect of Absalom, Absalom that went into a long discussion of the author’s intent in a single passage. When the paper was done, one of the panelists asked Falkner (who was present) what he though of the idea. His response was that he had intended something entirely different for that passage, whereupon another of the panelists leapt to his feet and exclaimed “No, you’re wrong!” That’s when, my father said, he swore off deconstructionism forever.
I hope pluky’s right. I recently had to sit and listen to this asinine gushing from a moderate about the wonderful xtian message of the last HP book. They went on to bash Pullman’s trilogy because he actually admits part of the purpose of his books. It just makes me wish Rowling had “outed” Dumbledore sooner.
On the positive side, this is just one more example of xtians co-opting secular culture in a feeble attempt to keep themselves relevant. Makes me want to dust off my Styper cassettes and put on my Coca-Cola script “Jesus Christ” shirt, and write an essay on how Gandalf is a messiah figure.
“What does Dumbledore being gay explain anything about the books?”
It explains why a muggle-lover like Dumbledore could get drawn into the ideas of Grindelwald. It’s not the _ideas_ that attracted DD, it was Grindelwald himself. Dumbledore never really supported wizard rule as a concept, but, consistent with the theme of the book, love is very powerful.
It was Grindelwald’s callousness toward Arianna that broke DD out of his lovesick devotion.
Without the love for Grindelwald, there is no reason that DD would have to become the muggle lover that we see in later life. But with that love, we can recognize that he was a muggle supporter all along, just blinded by love. That’s your backstory.
Moreover, maybe that is the _real_ reason he never agreed to be Minister…:)
A New Testament character–a rather important one to the story–was completely reinvented. We don’t have to talk in terms of the myth being changed after the canonical texts were selected–we have a fossilized account of the change that took place within the four gospels. Read Mark, then read John, and tell me that that’s the same Jesus. And no fair considering those interpolated verses at the end as part of the original text of Mark, either. Now you don’t even have a post-resurrection appearance in common. Baptism’s different. What Jesus says about himself is different. How people treat Jesus is different. And in one of them, I’m pretty sure Peter is gay. You know what I’m talking about.
@MikeM:
Dumbledore being gay would explain his blindness to the icky ideas of the young Grindelwald somewhat.
I always wondered why he trusted Snape so…
Joe,
This is actually something so commonplace in the history of religions that we historians have a term for this religious type: it is referred to as a “dying god cult”. There are numerous example is history, going all the way back to the origins of the cult of Isis and Osiris in Old Kingdom Egypt (roughly 2600 BCE, for the beginnings of the cult.) There are many more examples, most famously Dionysus in Greek and Roman (Bacchus) theology, where the god is annually torn apart in a fall ritual of consumption/death and then reborn in the spring by a generative/sexual rebirth.
It’s rather predictable that Christians would think they have a lock on the whole “dying god” thing, given that few of them really know even the history of their own religion, much less anyone else’s. That’s really why they’re convinced that anytime there’s a death/rebirth theme it just must be Christian, regardless of the fact that it is a commonplace story motif in religions around the world. I do try to remedy this in my ancient history classes, but it’s hard to get students to grasp the implications through their Christian filters. Still, I do try.
GregB, do you know my relatives?!
They really do think that HP is Evil and LOTR is great. When I asked for an explanation, I got this: “Harry Potter is about witches and the Bible says that witches are bad. Lord of the Rings just has wizards.” When I pointed out that witches and wizards are female and male versions of the same profession, I was told, “But the Bible doesn’t mention wizards, only witches.” They realize that the Bible wasn’t originally written in English, but apparently God somehow pointed out the right English word a monk used when translating the texts. Trust me. You cannot argue with these people. They are INSANE and cannot think logically.
My only consolation is that their kids will eventually see the HP series and scratch their heads wondering WTF their parents were thinking. It will cause them to then question every other insane thing their parents taught them.
Lets put this
in contrast with this:
Basicaly what this asshole is saying is: “I’d have no problem with Dumbledore being gay if it wasn’t showing but, since it’s not showing, he’s not gay!”
It all makes sense once you are aware of the little problems the religious have with basic logic…
Ken, Snape being hetero turned out to be quite central to the whole series. He had the saddest, most conflicted life of any character in the book. He loved Lily.
That’s one of the backstories from Hallows that I really appreciated.
As an aside, over the weekend, JK was explaining all of this to a group of people in Carnegie Hall and had a wardrobe malfunction. She wore the most unforunate dress I could imagine.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Speaking of Unfortunate, was anyone else as disappointed with “The End” (Book the Thirteenth) as I was?
Yes.
I’m no expert on HP, but apparently this arose because in one of the movie scripts, the screenwriters had added a romantic (heterosexual) subplot for Dumbledore, and Rowling wrote “Dumbledore is gay” in the margins, as a reason why this should not be added.
Assuming that this is the case, and that she always had a “backstory” for Dumbledore, then the revelation makes a certain amount of sense – she was trying to stop the screenwriters from deviating from her intent, and in doing so revealed something that was not explicit in the text.
I’d be willing to bet that there’s some steamy slash fanfic already in existence featuring Dumbledore in drag and visiting bath-houses in Hogsmead. :)
Yeah, Dumbledore being gay doesn’t really explain anything in the books.
Now **Jesus** being gay would explain a lot of stuff in the bible.
How ’bout it, god? Care to out him?
The whole point is that some people want “the children” to be protected from that eye-opening moment that comes when someone you know and love turns out to be (gasp!) gay.
Kudos to Rowling for doing it this way.
Yes it does. As one example, Leviticus 19:31 (KJV):
Whether or not “wizard” there or elsewhere in the biblytoons has a similar meaning to “wizard” in modern usage (as in LotR et al.) I’ve no idea.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/ebd/ebd383.htm suggests a similar meaning:
A pretender? Well, in reality, yes. Gandalf et al. are, sadly, fictional. But the implication is there are biblytoons with real magic.
Ah. Wait. That’s the basis for biblytoons. The Big Magic Woman in the Sky dun it. Or want it. Whatever.
Let’s just get one thing straight. There *are* Christian themes in the HP books. I’m not making this up. I have it on the same authority that tells me Albus Dumbledore is gay — JK Rowling says so.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1572107/20071017/index.jhtml
So please let’s not go on about nasty Christians trying to get their grubby little hands on anything good or popular.
Greg Peterson wrote:
Read Mark, then read John, and tell me that that’s the same Jesus. And no fair considering those interpolated verses at the end as part of the original text of Mark, either. Now you don’t even have a post-resurrection appearance in common. Baptism’s different. What Jesus says about himself is different. How people treat Jesus is different.
Greg forgot to mention that the day on which Jesus is crucified isn’t even the same. In Mark, the last supper is the Passover meal; in John the crucifixion is simultaneous with the lambs being slaughtered on the Day of Preparation, before the Passover.
Jennifer Ouellette: From what I remember of HP fandom, there already were. This can’t give them any ideas they didn’t already have. ^_^
I have to admit, when I first heard this news the first thing that popped into my head was “what was she thinking”, not because I have any problem with Dumbledore being gay, but because of all the people who have found Christian themes (whether one believes they were intentional or not, some people have interpreted it that way), it seemed like she was glibly burning a big consumer/fan bridge. Very interesting. Of course Christian reaction has been pretty disjointed, you have both people who say Harry Potter is satanic and those that see religon-related moral lessons in the books, this news has given both sides something to shout about but for different reasons, one with “I told you so, we weren’t wrong!” and one with “Wait she can’t say that, we can’t be wrong!”.
That’s seriously nutso stuff! Are we allowed to note the deeply Christian themes of irrationality and hypocrisy in John Mark Reynolds’ rant? Or go further and note that they are common to people of other religious faiths?
What he’s effectively saying is that: if any god suddenly turned up and announced (s)he’d always known some fact X which is entirely consistent with the whole Bible but which John himself doesn’t want to be true, then he’d reject X with the excuse that it wasn’t explicitly and baldly stated in the Bible and because he hadn’t been hit over the head with fact X before the time that he was.
God muffed it by knowing X but not doing anything more than embed X in the flow of the text so subtly that it could be ignored by the wilfully blinkered. Since the Bible is written, edited and published, John believes it now belongs to him and other readers to misinterpret as he sees fit, even if he disagrees with god (the alleged writer) in the process!
Astounding arrogance – and very Christian. That stuff about humility is really only a bluff.
This whole story is pretty ridiculous, I mean it’s just totally inconsequential to make some wizard gay after the fact. Why don’t we just assume that more classic characters are gay, like the Merlin from The Old Man and the Sea?
http://www.humblenarrator.com/2007/10/23/hemingways-estate-admits-giant-merlin-from-the-old-man-and-the-sea-is-gay/
When I first read this, I felt a little disappointed with Rowling. She invited the above-cited lunatic’s response by not putting this “fact” about Dumbledore in the text. Rowling has more clout than any other authors I can think of and unparalleled audience reach. Her series was revolutionary only in terms of sales records but she could have changed that with one sentence; Rowling could have given many teenagers (gay or not) their first encounter with a sympathetic gay character in literature. I can’t imagine being in her position with her conception of the character and not taking the opportunity to make it clear that he was gay. The only reason I can think that she avoided making it clear was to avoid controversy, which is too bad.
Just like the boarding school type setting is a very English throwback, so the Dumbledore – Grindewald youthful infatuation was a bit like Brideshead Revisted – a very English sort of gay! I’m glad that JK quashed a hetero back-story that without even thinking about DD’s sexuality till now, really would have seemed inappropriate.
errr…in case you didn’t know, Bill Dembski actually IS Harry Potter. Evidence, informal lectures and field trips have confirmed this proposition.
OMG. I can’t believe people are ARGUING over this. Now think of the reams and reams of notes Tolkien left, and the posthumous publishing of some of the notes as stories. Are they any less part of the “canon” of Middle Earth? Now here comes along information that for some reason totally beyond my ken shocks people, and we’re arguing about gender preference, an artists rights to her characters and their (yet) unpublished exploits, and whether or not this is “fair”?
Isn’t this a bit stupid?
Personally, I think Rowling should shock the hell out of the right wing nay sayers and write Dumbledore and the Special Wand… or something along that line… just to shut people up.
Yeah, if people keep posting on this like it’s a serious issue worth having an opinion about then, so help me, I will put a picture of Radcliffe’s junks and a horse in here.
Apparently the last Potter book made Dumbledore’s homosexuality pretty obvious:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/23/dumbledore/
The fact that the religious right has their collective panties in a twist over this is very entertaining.
It’s more fuss over nothing.
in case nobody has mentioned it yet, this reminds me of the then vice pres. Quayle obsessing over something “Murphy Brown” said on a then popular TV show.
fucking idiots, the lot of em.
OTOH, it goes to show how much influence fiction has on these folks, which shouldn’t be surprising since they spend a good portion of their lives worshiping a fictional book to begin with.
Here is the question I want answered; is Rincewind gay?
I asked the same question once before, and I ask it now. Does it really matter?
Write about it – blog about it. But don’t get too het up about it. Whichever viewpoint you happen to have.
Which one? The archchancellor at Bugarup U., or the racist? (He doesn’t care about a person’s shape or colour, he just runs away very fast.)
Not that it matters much, but I completely approve of this PZ approach to a complete non-issue.
Interesting.
Looks to me like she wants to believe but actually doesn’t…
—————-
:-o
Wow. Is that “heat — het — het” in analogy to “lead — led — led” and/or in order not to insert an extra syllable into “heat up”? A verb that becomes irregular (heat — heated — heated) rather than regular over time? That would be fascinating. I can send swarms of linguists over here. Should I?
Interesting.
Looks to me like she wants to believe but actually doesn’t…
—————-
:-o
Wow. Is that “heat — het — het” in analogy to “lead — led — led” and/or in order not to insert an extra syllable into “heat up”? A verb that becomes irregular (heat — heated — heated) rather than regular over time? That would be fascinating. I can send swarms of linguists over here. Should I?
Nah. `het’ in this case is old indeed: it’s attested from the 14th century, IIRC. `Getting het up’ is a fairly common phrase of informal English, at least in the UK.
Speak not of the Big Model! Speak of the Devil and you see Edwards’ horns.
I found this in the LA Times today.
“Albus Dumbledore” is an anagram of “Male bods rule, bud!”
I like it.
Can’t speak about old Bill Rincewind from Bugarup U but the UU version… probably not. He’s a consort of the Lady after all.
As for the Dumbledore revelation, I’m personally not all that impressed. If it was sufficiently important to the story that it had to be revealed, especially to explain his relationship with Grindlewald, then it should have been revealed in the text of the story itself. If it wasn’t that important, then it should never have been mentioned.
Clarifications of points that may have not been suffciently clear once the books are finished are one thing. The addition of completely new information is just sloppy authorship. Not that this is anything new from Rowling. The complete deus ex machina about the Deathly Hallows which had never even been hinted at prior to book 7 and the constant references to Merlin without thinking through some of the implication of what that would mean. (Who needs the Sword of Godric Gryffindor when you can just apparate down to Glastonbury Tor and ask the Lady of the Lake very nicely if you can borrow the Sword of Promised Victory aka Excalibur for while)
Another (fairly well-known) writer’s take on this:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2007/10/flowers-of-romance.html
Basically he says that any writer will have a lot of unwritten backstory for most characters, and this remains unwritten as long as it is extraneous to the story being written.
Just interesting to look at what JM Reynolds used to say about Dumbledore:
“Hey, that wasn’t supposed to come out yet. Incloseto putbacko!”
heh heh, a little humor from The Onion.
#41:
“The whole point is that some people want “the children” to be protected from that eye-opening moment that comes when someone you know and love turns out to be (gasp!) gay.”
Which is absurd, of course. Children care a lot less about these things than adults. Most kids couldn’t care less. Some are curious, but most will just accept whatever a person is because it doesn’t *matter* to them.
I think caring about that sort of thing comes either with puberty (when your hormones make you care – at least, if you fancy that person) or else with the onset of Religion…
“I can even imagine crucifixion stories that have nothing at all to do with Christianity.”
Spartacus. And 50,000 others, for starters. Crucifixion was the method of execution the Roman Empire used on traitors and rebels.
As for the Dumbledore revelation, I’m personally not all that impressed. If it was sufficiently important to the story that it had to be revealed, especially to explain his relationship with Grindlewald, then it should have been revealed in the text of the story itself. If it wasn’t that important, then it should never have been mentioned.
Nuts. It wasn’t important to the books, which is why it never came up in the books. However, this was a Q&A session, where she was explicitly asked if there had ever been a love of Dumbledore’s life. What’s she supposed to do, lie and pretend she’s never thought about the issue? Evade the question and say “Read the books, I’m not telling you anything else”?
I think she’s done a perfectly good job in showing that a fictional figure’s sexuality doesn’t actually matter. Pissing off a load of fundies is a welcome byproduct.
What Peter Ellis just said here.
I’m going to repeat it for those with poor reading comprehension:
Nuts. It wasn’t important to the books, which is why it never came up in the books. However, this was a Q&A session, where she was explicitly asked if there had ever been a love of Dumbledore’s life. What’s she supposed to do, lie and pretend she’s never thought about the issue? Evade the question and say “Read the books, I’m not telling you anything else”?
I think she’s done a perfectly good job in showing that a fictional figure’s sexuality doesn’t actually matter. Pissing off a load of fundies is a welcome byproduct.
Exactly.
Rowling didn’t just piss off “fundies,” either. She seems to have upset a lot of straight liberal males who are officially tolerant, but who want their gay characters and personages clearly marked so they can be given a wide berth. Stuff that Dumbledore back into the closet, dammit! Why’d she have to shove his sexuality into my face? I don’t care if he liked boys, girls, or Mackled Malaclaws! Why is everybody so obsessed with sex sex sex? …. by the way, hee hee hee, tinkle giggle, I bet some of those libertarians haven’t ejaculated healthily into a vagina in a decade or more. Snork. Giggle. Titter. (Uh-oh, he said “Tit”, heheheheheh.)