Kevin Howell

Dumbledore Is Gay
October 21, 2007

When J.K. Rowling announced "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay" at her Carnege Hall appearance on Friday, Oct. 19, the audience gasped and then burst into applause. I'm of two minds with this disclosure: I think it's great but I wish she'd done more. 

First, I completely agree with Melissa Anelli, webmaster of the UK fan site The Leaky Cauldron, who told the Associated Press, "Jo Rowling calling any Harry Potter character gay would make wonderful strides in tolerance toward homosexuality. By dubbing someone so respected, so talented and so kind, as someone who just happens to be also homosexual, she's reinforcing the idea that a person's gayness is not something of which they should be ashamed."

But I also wish that Rowling had used her enormous power and visibility to have actually woven a gay or lesbian character into the fabric of her wonderful series of books. I wish that she had not merely thought of the Hogwarts headmaster's as gay, but written him as gay. I am not suggesting there should have been any overt sexual scenes--her novels don't have heterosexual sex, let alone homosexual sex. I also realize that the novels are told from the point of view of Harry, so we rarely have any window into the private lives of any of the school's faculty.

But, in the final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we finally do get Dumbledore's backstory, including his friendship with Gellert Grindlewald. The Leaky Caldron's transcript of Rowling's full answer to the New York audience quotes her as saying:

"Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter]  If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

This statement makes it sound like a reader would have to be blind not to have seen it all. But, as someone who is constantly looking for gay subtext, I didn't see it. And based on the media attention her comments have recieved, this appears to be news to most of the reading public too. I wish this revelation had been clearly spelled out in the book and when it was revealed to the readers, it would have been great if this piece of information was treated as something everyone had known for decades. It could be a surprise to the readers that Dumbledore was gay, but all the characters in the book, this was old news that didn't change the way anyone viewed him.

For years, within the gay community, there has been two camps about Harry Potter: those complaining that there was no queer representation in the novels, and those who found plenty. In his 2003 piece, "Queering of Harry Potter," gay historian Michael Bronski said, "Rowling has never stated or even implied that the Potter books are gay allegory, but her language and story effortlessly lend themselves to such a reading. ...the language Rowling has the Dursleys use to discuss Harry’s mother and her wizard husband, referring to “her crowd” and to “their kind,” mirrors that often used to invoke homosexuality. Once Harry discovers the nature of his difference, the Dursleys demand complete silence and total concealment.” 

While I didn't see much foreshadowing for Dumbledore's coming out, thats not to say that I didn't have queer suspicions about some of the other characters. Sirius Black "never bothered having a girlfriend" and was disowned by his family for disgracing the family name. Remus Lupin was known to many fans as "the Ambiguously Gay Werewolf." And we weren't convinced otherwise even after Rowling married Lupin off to Tonks, who was as butch a lesbian icon as Xena. And perhaps it was wishful thinking, but didn't anyone else sense more sexual tension between Harry and Draco Malfoy than Harry and Ginny?

Posted by Kevin Howell on October 21, 2007 | Comments (4)