Brokeback Hogwarts

"Why hello, little boy..."

In case you haven't heard by now, Albus Dumbledore is gay! Yes, Harry Potter author JK Rowling has "outed" a dead fictional character - the celebrated headmaster of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry - and the world is in an uproar.

Frankly, I think the announcement is a very odd thing to do.

On the one hand, it's kinda cowardly to make such a dramatic and controversial revelation (Gay characters in a children's novel?! And the hero's much-loved moral mentor too?!) when it no longer can impact on sales. It's kind of like announcing that Will Young was gay only after he'd rode the adoration of many young girls to win the first UK Pop Idols. If you want to make a statement against bigotry and ridiculous prejudice by showing gays as courageous, self-sacrificing heroes, don't leave it as a post-script. Be upfront about it. Then again, I'm reacting as if Dumbledore is a real person, and not a string of letters on a page.

Then I think, hey, Joanne's gotta find some way to keep tills ringing now that the 7-book series is finished. How many of these little "bonus" tidbits will we be hearing in the coming years? Were Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown actually lesbians? Did the staff of Hogwarts use the castle dungeons for secret, sordid orgies, overseen by Filch in a gimp suit? Does Professor McGonagall wear a strap-on? You know, that kind of stuff.


This classic pic comes from the excellent Best Week Ever blog.

And for those of you interested, here's the AFP article on Dumbledore's outing:

Harry Potter author JK Rowling 'outs' Dumbledore

NEW YORK (AFP) — J.K. Rowling has revealed a secret about one of the main characters in her Harry Potter books: the wizard Dumbledore is gay.

The best-selling British author made the confession Friday evening in Carnegie Hall in New York when a young fan asked her if the headmaster of the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy ever fell in love.

"My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," said Rowling, whose comments were posted on the Potter fan website TheLeakyCauldron.org.

She said Professor Dumbledore had fallen in love with the wizard Gellert Grindelwald, but was crestfallen as Grindelwald turned his talents to the dark arts.

Dumbledore was "drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him," she said.

During a script reading for the sixth Harry Potter film, the author corrected a reference to Dumbledore waxing nostalgic about a female flame, she said.

"I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, 'Dumbledore's gay!' Rowling said.

Her revelations about Dumbledore drew a "prolonged ovation," according to the fan website.

"If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!" she told her fans.

In the Potter films, Dumbledore was played by the late Richard Harris and then by Michael Gambon.

Rowling, 42, who has become a billionaire from the Potter phenomenon, was on a US book tour and Friday's event was for 1,000 fans who won tickets in a sweepstakes organized by the US publisher of her books, Scholastic.

The first in the boy wizard series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," was published in 1997 and the final and seventh novel, "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows", broke records after going on sale in July.

Some 325 million copies of the first six volumes have been sold worldwide, and the books have been translated into 64 languages.

As for telling her admiring readers about the sexual preference of Professor Dumbledore, she said: "I had to give you something to talk about for the next 10 years...Just imagine the fan fiction now."

For those of you still contemplating the issue, there's a thought-provoking read over at Salon.com, which digs up all the "Dumbledore is gay!" clues dropped in Deathly Hallows, and debates the dangers of authors who squash all ambiguity in their text by revealing their authorial intentions in detail.