Is Dumbledore Gay? Depends on Definitions of ‘Is’ and ‘Gay’

By Edward Rothstein writing in The New Yorke Times, October 29, 2007

In some circles the “Harry Potter” news that erupted a little over a week ago still inspires as much amazement as Hagrid’s pet, the half-horse, half-eagle hippogriff. And the Web chatter has been as deafening as the noise in Hogwarts dining hall before the sorting ceremony determines the fates of entering students. Dumbledore, it turns out, the wise and wizened wizard of “Harry Potter” fame, is taking his place alongside other media figures, like Bert and Ernie and Tinky Winky of the Teletubbies. For all, sexuality has become an issue. Dumbledore is, as his creator, J. K. Rowling, asserted at Carnegie Hall, gay.

Dumbledore? The master wizard of the age, whose guidance of Hogwarts put that British boarding school for young wizards in the vanguard of the war against evil? Who watched over Harry from his infancy, schooling him for the last and greatest battle? Who knew? But the real shock in Ms. Rowling’s declaration is not that Dumbledore thought about sexual encounters with men, it’s that he thought about sex at all, given the need to thwart Voldemort’s plot for world domination.

In her outing of Dumbledore, Ms. Rowling seemed to be confirming the smarmy kiss-and-tell insinuations of her gossip-mongering character Rita Skeeter, whose lurid biography of the apparently saintly headmaster — titled “The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore” — is described in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

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