The Whole Gay Dumbledore Thing

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The Whole Gay Dumbledore Thing

October 22, 2007 by Katherine Coble

If you are just now figuring out that a man who wore a purple suit, was unmarried for the entirety of his long life, acted rather flamboyantly and was only described as having an intimately close relationship with a young man might be gay…

Okay.

Posted in Harry Potter | 21 Comments

21 Responses

on October 22, 2007 at 12:46 pm | Reply gavin

gee, with that description you could be talking about all kinds of catholic or anglican clergy… are they gay
- on July 28, 2009 at 3:41 am | Reply Mabus
  
  In fact many of them are …
on October 22, 2007 at 12:52 pm | Reply Katherine Coble

No, he wore an actual purple suit. A business suit. That was purple.

This younger Albus Dumbledore’s long hair and beard were auburn. Having reached their side of the street, he strode off along the pavement, drawing many curious glances due to the flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet that he was wearing.

I’d suspected for a long time that he was gay a la E.M. Forster’s Maurice. She seemed to hint broadly at it over the years.

When I first read that passage in HBP 2.5 years ago I was pretty darned sure that’s where she was going with it.

Then when DH did the whole “deconstructing Dumbledore” thing and went into detail about the Grindlewald relationship I had no doubt at all. None whatsoever.

In fact, much of her writing about the Dumbledore/Grindlewald relationship is very evocative of Forster in structure if not in tone.
on October 22, 2007 at 1:08 pm | Reply gavin

not being one who has read the books, i loose out on those subtleties.. i might have dismissed it though as mystic metrosexual. &:~)
on October 22, 2007 at 2:00 pm | Reply gavin

more in the ‘really?’ category of this story
on October 22, 2007 at 2:09 pm | Reply dolphin

with that description you could be talking about all kinds of catholic or anglican clergy… are they gay

Particularly during the time when catholic priests were to remain celibate, there was a huge gay population among the priesthood.

drawing many curious glances due to the flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet that he was wearing.

not only purple but velvet as well? She ought to have added that he was singing Elton John and waving a rainbow flag 😉
on October 22, 2007 at 2:22 pm | Reply Katherine Coble

Particularly during the time when catholic priests were to remain celibate

Isn’t that time called “now”?

not only purple but velvet as well? She ought to have added that he was singing Elton John and waving a rainbow flag

That was along the lines of what I was thinking when I first read the book.

Knowing that she’d hinted around about there being some gay characters, I assumed she’d meant Dumbledore and possibly McGonagall as well.

(It’s not exactly unheard of in the British Public School system for staff to be gay or lesbian.)

I think she had to walk a fine line to present his homosexuality while not presenting any actual sexuality beyond the nascent attraction stages of early adolescence.

The books are notorious for their abjurement of complicated sexuality. All the poor folks who hoped for a long tongue kiss between Lupin and Black were destined to be disappointed–as I’ve been telling them for, oh, 7 years now.

Since she was stuck trying to show us a gay character without going into detail about his sexuality, it sort of seemed that she was stuck with a fashion of stereotypes to get her point across.
on October 22, 2007 at 2:51 pm | Reply dolphin

Isn’t that time called “now”?

Well yeah I suppose so, but I guess I was thinking of the Eastern Catholic Church which still submits to the authority of the Vatican yet lets it’s priests marry and father children.
on October 22, 2007 at 3:07 pm | Reply nm

Dolphin, for most of the history of the Catholic church, its noncelibacy scandals have been almost exclusively heterosexual. The Anglicans, no so much, at least not since Newman, but for Catholics, the golden age of (celibate or not) homosexual clergy didn’t get started until the later 1970s. So many priests were leaving to get married that seminaries (to their credit, I suppose) started pressing seminarians not to continue if they thought they might ever, ever have a problem due to falling for women. And guess who was immune to that particular temptation?
on October 22, 2007 at 4:05 pm | Reply Patrick

I really think this is J.K.’s way of intimidating all the writers of Dumbledore romance-novel-esque fanfic…
on October 22, 2007 at 4:30 pm | Reply Katherine Coble

I’d imagine she gave up on that dream a long time ago. If there’s one thing my grammatically incorrect hate mail bears out, it’s that the fanfiction authors cannot be stopped.
on October 22, 2007 at 4:38 pm | Reply Roger Abramson

You mean it wasn’t Severus Snape? Darn! Missed again.

http://www.musiccitybloggers.com/2007/07/16/oh-man-harry-potter-totally-dies-in-the-last-book/

In truth, I never really paid attention…Dumbeldore’s orientation–oh, excuse me, his PERSONAL-CHOICE-THAT-HE-HAS-COMPLETE-CONTROL-OVER-AND-DON’T-LET-ANYBODY-TELL-YOU-DIFFURNT-ESPCIALLY-NOT-SOME-SECULAR-YANKEE-LIBERAL–never occurred to me.

I just thought he was a Prince fan.
on October 22, 2007 at 4:39 pm | Reply Roger Abramson

By the way, Kat…I’m goin’ to Disney World! Nana nana boo boo!
on October 22, 2007 at 5:17 pm | Reply Katherine Coble

Roger, you are a mean person.

You’re not just mean, you’re Dr. House mean.
on October 23, 2007 at 8:47 am | Reply Roger Abramson

It’ll be just Thomas and me for the week. I’m not all that excited about staying in the “Pop Century” resort, but I figure we won’t be in the hotel room much. I’ll send pictures.
on October 23, 2007 at 10:23 pm | Reply Eric

This really doesn’t surprise me that a contemporary writer would lace adolescent/children’s books with homosexuality and occult practices.

It’s par for the course, and the norm for the times we’re in. It’s all about “tolerance”. Well, what about teaching kids – Ah, now here’s a bright idea! – MORALITY!?

Just another reason for not finishing the books.

I wonder how all the “Christian” supporters of this series are going to justify this?
on October 24, 2007 at 9:19 am | Reply dolphin

I think Eric is one of my favorite commenters in the TN blogosphere.

I’d probably read 15 or so of his comments before finally realizing that they weren’t actually intended to be (very talented) satire. I think satire that is not satire is even funnier than satire that is.
on October 24, 2007 at 12:16 pm | Reply Eric

Thanks, dolphin, for that compliment! 🙂

To be terribly honest, I think it was just a bit of sensationalism on J.K. Rowling’s part in order to appeal to a wider audience….

Otherwise what’s the relevance?
on October 24, 2007 at 10:27 pm | Reply tom

http://www.dumbledorepride.com/

I found this and I thought it was kind of funny. There’s always someone who is enterprising enough to capitalize on controversies.
on October 25, 2007 at 12:18 pm | Reply Victor

read this written about a year ago about D’s “gayness”: http://petsaur.blogspot.com/2006/12/gender-in-harry-potter.html
on October 25, 2007 at 12:19 pm | Reply Victor

Dumbledore has always been gay, I wrote about this a year ago. Take a look: http://petsaur.blogspot.com/2006/12/gender-in-harry-potter.html