Dumbledore is Not Gay. Sorry.

I'm sorry, but I have to say something: it is not within J.K. Rowling's rights as an author to declare four months after the last Harry Potter book is published that Dumbledore is gay. I'm not talking about whether or not Dumbledore should be gay or has a right to be gay or even might possibly be gay, but the fact is that once a book leaves an author's hands, it is no longer her book! A writer gives birth to a book like a mother gives birth to a baby, and any writer is therefore intensely possessive of their book. But just as a mother cannot declare that her child is gay unless the child declares homosexuality first, an author cannot declare a character to be gay unless the book itself makes that same declaration.

I have no problem with Dumbledore being gay, except that it makes me wonder about Gandalf.... I heard in a history class once that some historians believe most priests and monks in the Middle Ages were actually gay. I've heard that homosexuality may have been something Paul struggled with. I've even heard it said that Jesus was gay. All of these are interesting to think about and worth pondering while you read church history or the New Testament or Lord of the Rings but in the end, it's all speculation, because it doesn't say that anywhere in there.

There is a reason that literature classes still read and dissect Shakespeare and Joyce and Cervantes, and it is that the text takes a life of its own outside of the writer. Maybe Shakespeare gave an interview in which he completely explained Hamlet, but if he did, we've long since lost it, and we've lost it because we don't care very much about what Shakespeare thought; we would prefer to wrestle with Hamlet ourselves because we know that - for ourselves - we can explain Hamlet's behavior better than anyone. We can explain it better because we are reading it, and the story is really half the writer's creation and half the reader's creation. I read it so it's my story as much as Shakespeare's (in a sense) so I can tell it how I want to. That's the beauty of literature and why we keep reading it.

Were Rowling to say at some point that she had always thought of Dumbledore as gay (but for whatever reason never chose to show directly that in the book) then I would be very interested in reading through Harry Potter and trying to get inside Dumbledore's head and figure out if I think he is gay. That's half the fun of reading, trying to figure out what is going on beneath what is happening on the surface. Of course, Harry Potter is not really that kind of book and its characters aren't really all that complex, so I do not think I would find any indications one way or the other as to Dumbledore's sexual tendencies.

Honestly, in my reading, Dumbledore has no sexuality, because Dumbledore is not a "real" character in that way. He is a hero, a distant idol, and even at the end - when Harry begins to doubt Dumbledore's sincerity - the wizard is still out there, away, not part of the action. He is therefore as sexless as McGonnagal or Gandalf or any other great austere saints. Sexuality is a significant and vital part of life, and I don't want to suggest that the really big important ones don't have it, but as long as they are portrayed as the really big important ones (off there somewhere, only stepping in to lend a hand to the little guy) then there is something good in recognizing that you can be somebody apart from your sex. That you can be Dumbledore and no one ever knows - or cares - whether you like men or women or don't even think about it at all.

J.K. Rowling was at a book signing when some kid asked her whether she thought "Dumbledore would ever find true love." This is a funny question to me since Dumbledore dies, and I would have replied "No, he died too soon," but Rowling replied "Dumbledore is gay," which is also funny because (a) Dumbledore is still dead and (b) it doesn't answer the question unless you assume homosexuals cannot find true love and (c) it seems like something a frustrated author would say to a stupid question.

I blame a media determined to be non-judgmental for picking up on this and declaring in headline after headline: Dumbledore is Gay.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to break the news: I don't care what his mamma says, Dumbledore is not gay. I read the books. I never heard him say it. Sorry.