So, Dumbledore is totally gay. There were hints in the last book, but I don’t remember anything earlier that would have given me the suspicion. And I totally think everyone is gay until proven straight, so I would be the most suspicious. In the last book, Rita Skeeter drops hints that Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry was inappropriate, working the whole homo-pedophile angle. And given the new context of Rowling’s comments, his friendship with Grindelwald does seem a little too intense for a straight boy. But here’s my problem with it, and with how I expect mugglenet.com to cover it:
1)No sex. Dumbledore, the smartest, most powerful, coolest wizard ever, wasn’t allowed to be a whole person. Why not? Did he channel all that energy into his magic instead? So now we have this cultural icon of a completely de-sexualized gay man, which is the only way America (and presumably Britain) likes its gay men. Dumbledore has become the 125 year old version of Will Truman.
2) Was Grindelwald gay? So that one rejection forced Dumbledore into the closet, never to be heard from again. Way to be healthy, asshole. Maybe Dumbledore gets action in Hyde Park on hot summer nights.
3) Because no one except the fanfic writers, and the more outside the mainstream ones at that, saw this coming, everyone is complaining that it was unnecessary, that it was a publicity stunt, that she should have just left him straight like everyone thought he was. Which implies that him being gay is the worse option. Everyone (in the broader, mainstream media sense of the word) says, “not that there’s anything wrong with that,” but really, they think that there is something wrong with it. It’s obvious from their sentence construction. If there wasn’t anything wrong with it, they wouldn’t have to tack that last bit on.
4) Mugglecast is a straightboy sausage party. They argue about things just to fill up time, they treat the only woman on the show like her opinion is shit on toast when their own opinions are also excrement on burnt bread, none of them is gay, sounds gay, or has gay friends. I expect the phrase “not that there’s anything wrong with that…” to be uttered innumerable times on next week’s show. Imagine 6 twenty year old goofball college nerds sitting around talking about their favorite subject, be it D&D or stamp collecting. These kids know EVERYTHING, obviously. I may sound a bit harsh. I do, after all, continue to listen to Mugglecast even though the last book is out and discussion by all sane persons who have lives is done. But I end up more annoyed and argumentative after listening to an episode than I was before I started, which is not my idea of the desired outcome of a balanced, interesting discussion. I don’t trust them to handle this.
So there it is. In my opinion, Dumbledore was a tragic closet case with a Machiavellian complex. I’m sorry I used Geraldo video, but it was what they had posted on Mugglenet. He’s the only person who thought this was “news.”
