Why I Care That Dumbledore is Gay, by Matan
moocowinthecity Okay, first I’ll throw this out here to address the argument that “why do gay people constantly have to flaunt their sexuality.”
Everyone else’s sexuality doesn’t have to be stated, because for the most part it’s implied. Implied by who they date, who they marry, who have they have children with, who they can kiss in public without having an uproar started, who they cast glances at (all of this covered in painful detail in the book, and in the epic amount of fan fiction that’s been written about the series).
The reason most of us care (perhaps, the majority, given the demographic that makes up most of the fandom) is because we’ve been in fandom for years (I used to belong to one of the larger sites admin-ing the chat room before we closed down and it was something I talked about, for the period of around four years, for most of my day…I was eating, sleeping, or talking Harry Potter). I’ve made life long friends (we’ve gone to their weddings, gone to their houses, celebrated life cycles, mourned passings, laughed and cried together). Overall, we’re excited because it gives us more to talk about, another reason (not that we need one) to re-read the entire series, more ways of writing other fan-fiction, exploring things that we previously didn’t think to explore…I was (and am) so into Harry Potter I went to another country for Book Six and sat around, and did nothing but read the book…in a room full of close friends who were doing nothing else, but reading the book and enjoying each others company.
As far as why it’s important for the Gay community? He’s a prominent figure in the book, is arguably one of the most influential reasons why evil doesn’t take over the earth (he founded the Order of the Phoenix) and is incredibly well educated – hallelujah we have a Gay Character that isn’t there for comedic effect or to die of AIDS breaking out of the usual archetype of Gay characters in the media…it’s about damn time…and oh, he’s not pedophile either (the third Archetype).
And knowing JKR, and knowing to what extent she researched her book (I did a 30 page paper on it and her, single spaced, when I was in High School some six-ish years ago and I could have written a few hundred pages more – and would have – if my teacher didn’t stop me). I highly doubt him being Gay was an afterthought…her Characters are personal for her so she may not have wanted to mention it publicly, but she certainly smiled about it privately while writing the book and certainly knew about this aspect of the character as she was laying pen to paper.
This isn’t a publicity stunt, she doesn’t need any more people to purchase her book – she has more money than the Queen – and there’s only so much you can earn a day before it really just doesn’t matter anymore…there’s volumes of books that can be written about each characters back story, their upbringing, their families…she’s created a world like many other literary greats before her (Tolkien, etc) and those worlds have the ability to have infinite numbers of pages dedicated to them…so we’re excited to have one more thing to discuss and to debate, and to banter about over beer with friends.
…though personally, I was hoping it was Sirius…oh man, oh man…why couldn’t it have been Sirius?