Albus Dumbledore

I'm sure that most of you have heard by now that author J.K. Rowling announced that one of the main characters in the Harry Potter series, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, was gay. As Rowling predicted, the Christian audience, who already made so much fuss about the whole "witchcraft and wizardry" issue, now has one more reason to ban Harry Potter from their library.

I'm not going to go on some rant about the morality of Rowling's decision to make the character gay, I think it's a little ridiculous that there's so much controversy over the sexual orientation of a FICTIONAL character to begin with. I do wonder however, along with many others, why Rowling chose to reveal this fact now, after the fact, and why she didn't write it in to a story full of blatant political correctness. She would often give descriptions of characters that included their ethnic background and/or physical appearance, and so to leave out something like that is a little puzzling. Of course, maybe she thought that her books would have met much more opposition had the headmaster been openly gay from the get-go; as it would have shone a whole new light on his relationship with Harry, and his motivations for doing the things he did (looking back and reading the new information into the text is different than having the information as we first encounter the text, wouldn't you say?)

I read this very interesting TIME magazine article by a gay author named John Cloud, who's article "Put Dumbledore Back In The Closet" ponders the question of why Dumbledore took the facts about his sexual orientation to his grave (save for possibly mentioning them to his love interest Gellert Grindelwald). In Cloud's view, Dumbledore's failure to be honest and open about his sexuality imports a "lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character."

I found that an interesting take on the issue. There were plenty of times Dumbledore chose to keep information from Harry or other characters for what he believed were greater purposes, so maybe his sexual orientation would have made Harry uncomfortable or what have you, and he wouldn't have been able to have such an influence in his life, therefore rendering him helpless before Lord Voldemort?

Either way, to hear a gay man say "put Dumbledore back in the closet" is pretty ironic. Check out the article, and let me know what you think.