I heard yesterday that Harry Potter series author J. K. Rowling announced that Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School, is gay. A friend of mine sent me a text message giving me the head’s up.
I found the news story at ABC News, and it’s true: Dumbledore is gay. I was disappointed to hear the news, but eventually my disappointment became curiosity. Why should I feel disappointed? What did it matter, Dumbledore’s sexual orientation? Why did I feel a sense of loss, together with a bit of exasperation with Rowling? Why did I also feel aggravated, even angry, after reading how Rowling characterized her intentions? I knew it wasn’t an issue of personal tolerance, for my lesbian sister-in-law and late gay brother-in-law certainly taught me something about tolerance. Why did I feel Rowling’s actions and words were somehow wrong, then?
Later in the evening, after pondering these questions, I had some definite ideas about my feelings. In no particular order, here they are:
First, she’s messing with my magic. The Harry Potter novels are fantasy novels that take the reader into wonderful, magical realms. This sort of magic isn’t to be trifled with or sullied through sex, religion, or politics. I’m reading for the magic, dammit, not the sex. I don’t want to hear about Dumbledore being gay, or about Harry and Hermione having sex, even if they are married. I don’t want to know when they lost their virginity. I don’t want to even think about the two of them, being all steamy. I don’t want to think about teenage boys and their sexual drivenness, or teenage girls and their overbearing hormones, either. I don’t want to know when Ginny got her first period. I don’t want to know about McGonigal’s hysterectomy, or Snape’s closet porn addiction. I don’t care about their mundane sexual activities, their secretions, their body odors, or their secret compulsions. If I wanted to have more of that stuff in my life, I’d live in the real world and watch reality TV or soap operas or Grey’s Anatomy. We all know this is the stuff the world is made of; and we all hope for something more.
That something more is the magic. It’s the ethereal, mysterious stuff of longing, daydreams, nightmares, fantasy and great books such as The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and, yes, Harry Potter. We never had to hear about Gandalf’s sexual preferences or Aragorn’s sex life, or whether King Peter was gay or straight; why in the name of all that’s magical do we need to know anything sexual about Dumbledore? You’re ruining my magic, Rowling. Stop it.
Second, I smell something neurotic. Rowling’s announcement seems self-destructive and self-abandoning. It appears to be more of a self-defeating trick of the unconscious than the noble act she would like to fashion it. According to ABC News Rowling “considers her novels as a ‘prolonged argument for tolerance,’ and urged her fans to ‘question authority.’” What authority? Whose authority? The authority of some bygone era when we didn’t have entire television shows produced by, for, and with gay men? The authority of a place where laws prosecuting hate crimes don’t exist, and where parents don’t regularly tell their boys to stop saying “you’re gay” as if “gay” is an insult? What place is that, J. K. Rowling? Because I thought that authoritarian voice that really had any power or respect at all went out with those Farrah Fawcett haircuts with wings.
Or maybe she meant that her readers ought to defy the authority of the life of the transcendant, glorious spirit that pre-dates Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling and will outlive them both? That deep life of the underworld, underground, undertow and misunderstood, the one that drives people to transcendence and ecstasy; the one from which our archetypes and great myths and universal symbols arise? Question and defy that authority? Pardon me while I burst out laughing.
I suspect Rowling has some inner authority telling her to shut up and be a good girl, and she finally came out with something shocking and devilish that means, to her, a defiance of some inner authority she carries. And I think that she projected her crap onto the ‘authority’ she imagines, rather like setting up a straw man argument and then feeling all full of oneself after knocking him down. I think so, because there’s a difference between theatrical noble acts and real ones. I don’t think Rowling is being truly noble; perhaps she is, but based on what I’ve read of her quotes, if they’re accurate quotes, something is fishy in Denmark.
