There are many stories available today dealing with J.K. Rowling's bombshell announcement that one of the central characters of her Harry Potter novels was a homosexual but I've found the articles from the college papers especially interesting. Here's one from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst); and here's another from the Berkeley campus rag containing this noteworthy observation: "And just like that, Rowling gave the middle finger to the religious right. All those parents so concerned over the negative influence of the “Harry Potter” series now have something else to fear."But the most concise report I found came from The Daily Texan, UT Austin's newspaper:
This past Friday, J.K. Rowling dropped a bombshell. Revealing to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall that the wise Hogwarts headmaster and mentor to Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, is gay, Rowling shocked both the audience and the world.
At a stop on her highly publicized open book tour, Rowling read a section of the last book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" before addressing questions from the audience. One question came from a young boy asking whether Dumbledore ever found true love.
With absolutely no hesitation Rowling replied, "Dumbledore is gay." The audience went into gasps and applause as Rowling continued to explain the mysterious backstory of Dumbledore.
Dumbledore was obsessed with his arch rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he was forced to fight and defeat long ago in a battle between good and bad. Rowling says that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down. Falling in love can blind us to an extent." She went on to explain that Dumbledore's "great tragedy" was his love.There are no references to Dumbledore's sexuality in the books, but Rowling did say that if you read between the lines in book seven, there are some underlying clues that would give him away. She said that she had to inform the screenwriters of the sixth film of the "coming out" because they had created a semi-love interest with a woman in the film, and Rowling would have nothing to do with that.
After the Q&A was complete, a quick poll was revealed showing mass support for Dumbledore's newfound sexuality.
Just a week earlier, Rowling had shared another secret with the media; namely, that the Harry Potter series were Christian literature. Hmm. Naturally, this didn't carry anything like the news interest the current story has produced. But still, if you want a fuller picture of what's been going on in J.K. Rowlings head, you'll want to look at this MTV report by Shawn Adler. Read closely, though, and I think you'll see that Rowlings' understanding of Christianity is marked by the same distinctives as modern Anglicanism itself: heterodoxy, doubt and, as the revelation about the Albus Dumbledore character shows, a sad rejection of the Bible's teaching on sexuality.
Harry Potter is followed by house-elves and goblins — not disciples — but for the sharp-eyed reader, the biblical parallels are striking. Author J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books have always, in fact, dealt explicitly with religious themes and questions, but until "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," they had never quoted any specific religion.
That was the plan from the start, Rowling told reporters during a press conference at the beginning of her Open Book Tour on Monday. It wasn't because she was afraid of inserting religion into a children's story. Rather, she was afraid that introducing religion (specifically Christianity) would give too much away to fans who might then see the parallels.
"To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious," she said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."
Indeed, at its most simplistic, Harry's final tale can in some respects be boiled down to a resurrection story, with Harry venturing to a heavenly way station of sorts after getting hit with a killing curse in Chapter 35, only to shortly return...
But while the book begins with a quote on the immortal soul — and though Harry finds peace with his own death at the end of his journey — it is the struggle itself which mirrors Rowling's own, the author said.
"The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot," she revealed. "On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes — that I do believe in life after death. [But] it's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."
That, by the author's own acknowledgement, "Harry Potter" deals extensively with Christian themes may be somewhat ironic, considering that many Christian leaders have denounced the series for glamorizing witchcraft. When he was known simply as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope himself condemned the books, writing that their "subtle seductions, which act unnoticed ... deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly."
For her part, Rowling said she's proud to be on numerous banned-book lists. As for the protests of some believers? Well, she doesn't take them as gospel.
"I go to church myself," she declared. "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion."
