10.22.2007

Alas, homosexual earwax

TORONTO - While gay Potter fans around the world were rejoicing Monday about Rowling's outing of the kindly Dumbledore in New York late last week, others were miffed that she didn't make his sexuality more obvious throughout the blockbuster series and questioned her motives in doing so now, months after the final book was published.
"I'm a gay fan and I'm not amused," Griet Verlinde, a 26-year-old psychologist from Belgium, said on the AfterElton.com blog.
"Firstly, how very 'nervy' of her to out him after all the books have come out and it won't harm her sales," she wrote. "Secondly, not a single rumour of this in the books. Nothing."
Predictably, right-wing Christian groups in the United States have also weighed in following years of assailing the "Harry Potter" series due to its focus on witchcraft. This time, Rowling's alleged crime is making homosexuals seem normal and kind-hearted to young readers.
Scott Dagostino, managing editor at Toronto's Fab Magazine, scoffs at the naysayers, saying Rowling did a courageous thing by making it clear to stunned fans at Carnegie Hall on Friday that Dumbledore is gay and was once in love with Grindelwald, something he says was long suspected anyway by some canny Potter fans.
Potterheads have pointed to lines like this one, from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," as providing clues to Dumbledore's sexuality: "'You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me."'
"I think she was being very funny and quite brave in not backing down from these people."
Dagostino said Rowling did nothing wrong in keeping Dumbledore's homosexuality subtle.
"Part of the theme of the books is the fact that the adult world is very secretive. Book by book, Harry Potter finds himself drawn into these adult machinations, and Dumbledore is presented as a man of great secrets, so this just adds one more layer to him," he said.
But Verlinde finds the out-of-the-blue revelation to be suspect.
"The timing does indeed seem odd," she said in an e-mail exchange from Belgium. "Rowling said: 'Oh, Dumbledore's gay' in response to someone asking if he ever found true love ... my question is, would she ever have told us if that question hadn't come up? When?

(From The Canadian Press) http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmduahDx6L90QoVrA_g5tqh-xBQA