AND so we learn that Dumbledore is one of those! No, not the occasional star of this blog of late, the Archwizard of Cant, bearded, behatted and the bearer of weird eyebrows, but the Dumbledore, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (or ex-headmaster, depending on which book you are on).
One is tempted to say, “Ho hum, so what? People are gay. Get used to it. It happens. There are straight people, too. And people with funny eyebrows.” But then we bring religionists into the equation. It will be only a matter of time 
before they start twitching – and they’re on the verge of that, according to the ever-helpful Ekklesia website.
They were already fuming and hissing because the Harry Potter stories contain material of an occult nature – i.e. harmless, storybook magic, loved by children and adults alike for centuries. But now – well, wow! A character is one of those? The horror of it!
But it’s there, straight from the author’s mouth. Joanne Rowling herself, bless her, revealed last week that the avuncular headmaster is indeed one of those.
We might have suspected it when he began a relationship – in flashback – with a handsome, blond, Teutonic hunk called Gellert Grindelwald in the last of the seven Potter books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Those who did not wish to be reminded that there really are some of those among us could just see it as a relationship of minds, since there is an intellectual bond between the two (then young) men. Others will have suspected that there was something of a romantic nature to the relationship. Rowling skilfully left it up to the reader to decide.
But now the cat is out of the bag – and it’s the Christians who are expected to be hissing and scratching. JK revealed all during an American tour – to a packed Carnegie Hall, to boot. The New York audience applauded.
“I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy,” Rowling told her audience. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent . . . Dumbledore was horribly, terribly let down.” Another website, CBN News, carries an Associated Press story declaring:
After acknowledging that not everyone likes her books, Rowling said that declaration about Dumbledore’s sexuality will give critics another reason to dislike them.
Christian groups are the opposition about which Rowling was most likely speaking, who argue that her books promote witchcraft.
A major anti-Potter crusader in the USA is Laura Mallory, a mother of four from Georgia, who “made headlines earlier this month when she told the Gwinnett County Board of Education that the series was trying to indoctrinate children into the Wicca religion”, says the ABC News site, which continues, ”In response to Dumbledore’s outing, Mallory told ABC News that the Potter series has ‘an anti-Christian agenda’, and, ‘this only further supports that’.”
Let the fun begin!
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UPDATE: What did we tell you?
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
