Albus Dumbledore Is Gay-- So What?

News flash for those who haven't heard: J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter series, has declared that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore is gay. Reactions from her vast audience all seemed to start with an intial expression of shock, followed by either groans of dismay or applause as deemed appropriate. Letters and e-mails have begun pouring in, on both sides of the subject. The announcement made CNN and many major newspapers. You get the picture. It's big, and it's controversial.

I admit that my own initial reaction fell somewhere in the "shock and dismay" category. Not so much because I think there's anything wrong with being gay, but because of the politicization which is likely to follow, and what that's likely to do to the story. Did you ever have an English teacher assign one of your old favorites as a class reading, then ruin it for you utterly by making the class spend hours on what it all meant? That's it exactly.

According to the news reports, it's already started. Melissa Anelli, webmaster of Harry Potter fansite The Leaky Cauldron, was quoted in CNN.com as saying, "By dubbing someone so respected, so talented and so kind, as someone who just happens to be also homosexual, she's [Rowling is]reinforcing the idea that a person's gayness is not something of which they should be ashamed." With all due respect for Ms. Anelli, the statement is technically true, but possibly beside the point. It goes like this: if homosexuality is somewhat normal, then there's no need to keep pointing it out.

Which is, I dare to suggest, why Rowling didn't hit us over the head with it. For the purposes of the story, Albus Dumbledore's sexual orientation is no more of an issue than Lee Jordan's dark skin, the Weasley family's poverty, or Harry Potter's glasses. In that context, it's no more remarkable to show a gay man as being magnificent, wise, and kind than it is to show an orphan boy as being generous, brave, and resourceful-- or to show another gay man as being unrepentantly evil, for that matter. Do the math: if Dumbledore was romantically involved with dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, then by logical extension, Grindelwald was also involved with Dumbledore. And yes, you could split hairs all day over whether they actually "did anything" (Rowling doesn't say) or whether Dumbledore's love was unrequited (unlikely, as the two young men were supposedly inseparable)-- but if you do, you miss the whole point. Albus Dumbledore was the man he was because he consistently chose to act for the greater good, not because of (or in spite of) his sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, some of the same people who see no shame in homosexuality will also see no shame in reducing a beautiful and complex story to that one issue in order to prove their point. And that would be an absolute tragedy. Yes, Dumbledore is gay. And Lee Jordan is black. And Ron Weasley is dirt-poor. And Harry Potter wears glasses, and Mad-Eye Moody is missing an eye and a limb, and Hermione's parents aren't wizards, and Luna Lovegood is a complete flake, and Professor McGonagall is surprisingly normal, and Neville Longbottom spends half the series as a terrified screwup, and--oh, who gives a damn. They live, they love, they grow, they kick bad guy butt. Enjoy the story.