For those who missed it, J.K. Rowling recently told fans at Carnegie Hall a secret about Albus Dumbledore — he was gay.

I foresee a number of protests about this in the future, mostly from the same people who protested the books before. If they weren’t willing to read the books before they protested that the books would seduce young people into witchcraft and Satanism^[a], they probably aren’t going to go read the books before protesting that the books attempt to seduce children into a homosexual lifestyle.

In the absense of new works set in the Potter universe, I really couldn’t care less what Rowling has to say about the universe. As I’ve learned from reading comics and watching television shows, creator comments outside of the story itself are non-canon, and thus secondary to what is actually seen in the works. Dumbledore doesn’t become gay simply because Rowling says he was — the books don’t give any definitive hints one way or the other, so it’s open to the reader’s interpretation. Her words may lead some people to read the clues that way, but if others prefer to read the stories as though he’s heterosexual, I see nothing wrong with that, either. I’m reminded of something that Orson Scott Card said in the foreword that appears in my copy of Ender’s Game:

All of these uses are valid; all of these readings of the book are “correct.” For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender’s Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The “true” story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

The story of Ender’s Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

The story of Harry Potter was created by J. K. Rowling, but she no longer owns it solely. If readers prefer to read the text as though Dumbledore is heterosexual, and there is nothing in the text to say explicitly otherwise, then, for them, in their version of the story, he is heterosexual.

That said, if Rowling intended Dumbledore to be gay from the outset, I’m actually somewhat pleased about how she handled it. The role that Dumbledore played never required that his sexuality be highlighted, and, so, it wasn’t. Many liberal writers who intend a major character to be gay tend to not only make the character’s sexuality known, they tend to make it the defining trait of the character^[b].

I applaud Rowling for her restraint in the way she portrayed Dumbledore’s character (again assuming she always meant for him to be gay). This is how minority groups will finally end the various types of discrimination that they face: instead of bashing others in the face with their differences, they need to make it obvious that the ways in which we are all the same greatly outweigh any minor differences like sexual orientation or skin color.

1. The “witchcraft” in these books has as much to do with real witchcraft as the Hardy Boys series has to do with real detective work. [↩]
2. My guess would be that this is related to the liberal tendency to believe that the groups to which one belongs should be more meaningful than one’s individuality — this is why the issues of Obama’s race and Clinton’s gender are so important to them, as well as why we hear people pondering such nonsense such as whether Obama is “black enough”, but that’s just my guess. [↩]

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