Fans applaud gay Dumbledore
2007-10-23 09:28
Toronto - The Muggle, or
non-wizard, world is agog at author JK Rowling's bombshell
announcement that one of the main characters in the Harry
Potter books was gay.
By Monday afternoon, after a weekend of gossip about
Rowling's "outing" of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore,
there were almost 6 000 comments on the issue on two popular
Harry Potter websites, www.leakynews.com and
www.mugglenet.com.
"Mostly people are happy that she has done this," said
Melissa Anelli, webmistress of the Leaky Cauldron site,
admitting that the site has seen a small subset of vocal
readers unhappy at the revelation.
"I think it's great, I think the way she handled it was
that this was just another fact about him, the same way that
he's a teacher, he likes bowling, chamber music. And if more
people were like that, we'd have less of a problem today."
Power of love
Rowling unveiled her news in New York's Carnegie Hall on
Friday, in answer to the question of whether Dumbledore - a
believer in the prevailing power of love - had ever fallen in
love himself.
"I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," she replied,
explaining that Dumbledore fell in love with his brilliant
friend Gellert Grindelwald, who later became a powerful dark
wizard whom Dumbledore defeated.
In the book that describes their friendship, Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows, one character says the two "got on
like a caldron on fire."
"To have one of the coolest, most respected wizards in
history and mentor of Harry Potter as gay, is the bravest move
JKR has ever made. I salute her," a fan identified as "Shain"
wrote on the Leaky site.
Deathly Hallows was the final instalment of the Harry
Potter series, where an orphan child wizard is pitted against
the evil Lord Voldemort.
'Positive gay role model'
The series has already courted controversy for its themes
of witchcraft, and is on many banned lists.
Dr Solomon Shapiro, a child and adolescent psychiatrist
who heads the Gender and Sexual Orientation Service at
Toronto's Hincks-Dellcrest Centre said the revelation could be
positive for gays.
"There's a paucity of gay characters in literature,
especially in children's literature, which reinforces a belief
that being gay is unusual and not normal."
"Having a positive gay role model in a popular children's
series can help thousands of young people who are gay, or think
they might be gay, come to fully accept themselves as they
are."
Rowling, who appears in Toronto on Tuesday, said her books
were a plea for tolerance.
"The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for
tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry," Rowling
said during the Carnegie event.