Dumbledore is Gay

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling announced yesterday that beloved Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was actually gay.

She was speaking to a packed Carnegie Hall in New York - and made the announcement after reading a short extract from The Deathly Hallows, the final book in the Harry Potter series.

The subject came up when a fan asked if there had ever been a true love in Dumbledore's life. Rowling revealed that wicked wizard Grindelwald, who Dumbledore befriended fifty years before Harry Potter entered his life, had been Dumbledore's one true love - and broken his heart when he went off to pursue his allegorically Hitleresque activities.

It's a fascinating revelation. Even more fascinating is why Rowling only chose to reveal this snippet of important information AFTER her series had concluded.

Clearly Dumbledore's sexuality has been fixed since the very beginning (Rowling even edited out a line of dialogue during one of the movie adaptations - which referred inaccurately to a past girlfriend of Dumbledore's.)

Cynically, one can only conclude that Rowling kept Dumbledore's sexuality private in order to keep the franchise's appeal as widespread as possible.

Aside from the ridiculous evangelical Christians in America's bible belt (who burn the books for promoting witchcraft) Harry Potter seems to have enormous widespread appeal. But while eugenics, conspiracy, murder, witchcraft, slavery and interracial relationships (Harry kisses a Chinese girl) are all touched upon in the books, none of them ever touched on sexuality as an issue (and rightly so - they're kid's books.)

Maybe an openly gay character (even one as benign, wise and positive as Dumbledore) would have incurred the wrath of the homophobes. While America pays lip service to equality (and features programs like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on TV) I think a gay character in the world's best selling children's book series would be too much for America to take.

Instead of a few nutty Christians lambasting the books for promoting witchcraft, there might well have been thousands of angry parents harassing Rowling for promoting alternative sexuality (even though she actually made no mention of it in her books)

So I can understand why she decided to reveal this snippet of information only after The Deathly Hallows had hit the stores (and the checkouts.)

But it's rather sad. Such an interesting development would have been so much more significant if she'd been willing to throw it out before the last book had been published.

The effect such a revelation had on the book's sales would have told us an awful lot about the apparently open-minded society we live in.