Hmm, I guess the wingnuts were right to oppose Harry Potter. Dumbledore is gay. Conclusive proof that magic makes you gay. Presumably reading about magic also makes you gay. Too bad Dumbledore died (punishment for his sins, no doubt.) Had he lived, maybe the guy who de-gayed Ted Haggard could’ve fixed up old Dumbledore too.
“Conclusive proof that magic makes you gay.”
Why do you think they call us fairies?
Now if I could only find that “increase blog traffic” spell….
If this was “conclusive proof that magic makes you gay,” then wouldn’t all of the characters – Harry included – be homosexual? Frankly, this is such a non-issue. The books aren’t changed in any way. What she wanted to reveal of Dumbledore is all there in the book – what she says now doesn’t shed any real light on what’s there. Her statements do shed light, however, on her power to get people talking again about a book whose hoopla had died down.
And the issue is?
Next thing you know they’ll start telling us that some of the boy bands that pre-teen girls like have gay members…wait…they already have?
Women seem to be drawn to the attractive, witty, suave, non-possessing gay male they can never have. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have fag hags.
But what distressed me was the statement she made— something to the effect that of course Dumbledore was single, because he was gay. Hm.. he couldn’t even conjure himself a mate? He’s not smart, attractive and powerful enough to attract a fairy? (Tongue in cheek, of course.)
I don’t know that this makes any larger point. It just appeals to my shit-stirring sense of mischief. There was a strain of Christians who raised a big fuss about Harry Potter because the kids used magic in the stories. This apparently was going to lead our kids to the occult. I thought (and still think) this is just silly. It’s a reasonably entertaining story, and if it gets a bunch of kids to read, then hooray.
Now, I’m just further amused by what I figure will be the reaction of this particular strain of Christians upon finding that Dumbledore is gay. I suspect they’ll be apoplectic. I suspect that homosexuality is a greater transgression to these folks than indulging in occult magic.
And yes, for the record, I am very easily amused.
I also say “Hooray, kids are reading!” I’ve only known one kid who mixed up fantasy with reality–and he has other issues!
The series of books that concerns me more is the fiction of the “Left Behind” series. Since it is LOOSLY based on apocalyptic literature in the Bible–people think it must be real. Yikes! A good book to combat this way of thinking is “The Rapture Exposed” by Barbara Rossing. I preached a few sermons on this last Advent when I found out a number of members were engrossed in the “Left Behind” books.
More Christian leaders need to get over Harry Potter and speak more about the dangers these books pose.
I prefer that authors/directors leave some things for us to figure out/guess at on our own. In the case of the Harry Potter franchise it isn’t a big deal to me, the movies having been rather more like something I’ve had to endure because I have children than something I particularly enjoyed. But I become annoyed when a novelist/director makes these sorts of announcements years after the work was released.
The movie “Blade Runner” is a case in point. Blade Runner lost something of its mystery when Ridley Scott announced that the Deckard character was himself a Replicant (although in the “Director’s Cut” of the movie it seemed rather obvious to me that he was and in the original novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) the question doesn’t even come up. Telling us things that are not explicit in the original book/movie cuts off the supply of grist which supports much enjoyable argument.
Left Behind author Tim LaHaye has been a significant force in pushing the Religious Right political movement as well:
Yeah…and doesn’t this war, the Euro, a possible woman president, etc. play nicely into his pre-trib worldview!
BTW we should have figured out about
Dumbledore in the first movie when the first thing he said was, “Does this robe make me look fat?”