This is worse than socially irresponsible; it’s bad writing.

From the department of too little too late; author J.K. Rowling on her first American in seven years, responded to a question from a young fan if Dumbledore ever finds true love by revealing, “Dumbledore is gay”.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down.”

Dumbledore’s love, she observed, was his “great tragedy.”

The revelation was frankly a huge cop out; and cowardly on Rowling’s part; who also talked how the Potter series was a “prolonged argument for tolerance”. While it’s true that the personal life of the Hogwarts teachers was rarely touched upon; Snape’s unrequited love for Harry Potter’s mother was a major plot point in all seven of the books; and the Dumbledore/Grindelwald dynamic was critical to book seven yet never adequately explained.

If Dumbledore was gay, I don’t want to hear about it now; it should have been in the book. But it appears Rowling was unwilling to put her money where her mouth is; risking derailing the sales juggernaut that was Harry Potter, by featuring an openly gay character in it.

Rowling can trumpet tolerance all she wants and put in moralistic subplots about “House Elfs” but at the end of the day the only Harry Potter universe that really matters is the one people pay money to read, and that’s a world without gay people.

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