Why Rowling should not have outed DD

[Dana]

Tonks:
<snip>
> The gay issue is a minor one in comparison to
> the other teachings in the books. And these teachings were give by
> DD. She has now discredited him to a large segment of the world.
> This is a serious problem and goes far beyond the gay issue. She
> should have left that issue for others. It was not the primary
> mission of her books, and if it was it should have been IN the
> books. The fact that it wasn’t in the books is proof enough that 
> she had a different purpose in mind when she wrote them. All in all,
> the outing of DD was a senseless, tragic thing to do. These books
> are not just for the minority of us who are liberals, it is for the
> masses and they my friends are mostly conservative. And just when
> the Religious right could have opened their minds to the books
> because of the Christian themes, she gave them more reason to ban
> them. Way to go Rowling!!
<snip>

Dana:
Interesting because the same could be said about JKR acknowledging 
the books were about her faith in God, a Christian faith if I might 
add. In a lot of countries Christianity is not the predominant 
religion and to many non-Christian readers this acknowledgment might 
have ruined the books for them. 

Also if her mission was tolerance it got right past you because you 
are displaying an enormous amount of intolerance here. Gay people 
should not be included in the Harry Potter world because some people 
might not tolerate the idea of a main character being gay? So what 
the mainstream of people might or might not think is more important 
to you so it seems. Isn't that what you are doing, precisely what the 
book is supposed to be preaching against? Tolerance is not about the 
exclusion of anyone not fitting within the mainstream ideal but 
actually about embracing all, with the notion that the mainstream 
ideal is actually flawed if it has a basis of exclusion to up hold 
the idealism of how this world should be and how people should act 
within the perimeters of these idealistic viewpoints. 

Slytherin house excluded all whose blood wasn't pure enough to be 
included into their idealistic club of blood supremacy. They start 
off as being at the top of the social order of things and they end up 
at the bottom for fighting a cause that is essentially against 
humanity (WW). Those that thought they could find inclusion into this 
club by adopting this ideology found themselves paying the hard price 
for their own ignorance. You are doing the same thing here, you think 
that exclusion of homosexuality will make it able for the people of 
the world to unite due to reading the same books but if exclusion is 
what it takes to unite people, the unity in itself is just an 
illusion because what unites them has no reflection on RL at all. 

Gay people read these books too, you know, and you exclude them by 
default because others might not condone of their way of life. So 
your unity is actually not a unity at all because it still is based 
on the exclusion of a group of people who ARE part of our society 
because others might not except their existence and therefore exclude 
themselves from having any part in this endeavor of creating equality 
for all. If you think that the ideals of those not accepting 
homosexuality are more important then the ideals of those that do 
accept this as part of life, then you are missing the point about 
what tolerance is supposed to be about and thus missing the theme JKR 
was supposed to be writing about. 

You do not change the world by pretending all have the same values 
while in reality they actually are not. You accept homosexuality even 
though you are not gay yourself, for some people that will be enough 
to exclude you from their mailing list. Are you going to change your 
values because those people are not willing to accept you because you 
associate yourself with gay people? Or people of color or specific 
religious backgrounds or social status or disagreeable life-styles? 
If you would, then you are actually denying yourself the right to be 
whomever you want to be and to think whatever you want to think. 
Acceptance based on a false premise is not acceptance and if you have 
to change your own outline to be accepted for who you are then you 
are untrue to yourself. That is what many people have been fighting 
against their entire life, to have the right to be and not be dictate 
who they are supposed to be in accordance to the views of others. 

I have read some of your posts, in which you state you yourself have 
gay friends, so I am totally lost at the idea that it is more 
important to you what the rest of the world thinks over the idea to 
embrace your own friends being acknowledged as part of HP society 
(regardless how slim this actual acknowledgement might be). If I were 
gay and you were my friend then this would be reason enough for me to 
discontinue my friendship with you, because I would no longer be able 
to trust that you would stick up for me when push comes to shove. If 
it only takes a book for you to be prepared to deny my existence so 
the rest of the world can feel comfortable enough within their own 
illusionary world of self-importance then what would happen if the 
world was taken over by people similar to Hitler, who actively tried 
to exterminate people not accepted within his own limited world view 
of a perfect race? Would you be willing to fight against such views 
if they are at that time the predominant sentiments of the people 
living around you? Or would you suggest to your friend to hide his or 
hers identity (or an essential part of it) so they can blend into 
society unseen? But what if those sentiments include something that 
you can't hide because it is part of your physical description? 

I am not trying to imply that you would not actually be loyal to your 
friends and fight for them till the bitter end, but it does seem to 
me that the concept of unity is slightly clouding your judgment of 
what acceptance is actually about. Omission of that what might upset 
a person's viewpoint is not acceptance.  Prejudice can't be 
eradicated by removing those elements that cause the prejudice in the 
first place, that is what humanity has been trying to do for 
centuries and still don't see that they are fighting a lost cause 
that will not enrich but actually deprive us from the power we could 
have as a civilization. If people can no longer accept the Harry 
Potter books now that JKR has revealed DD's sexual orientation then 
it is their loss and people who are willing to accept humanity in all 
its facets are better off without their input to begin with. Changing 
your view to fit their needs will just empower their prejudice, not 
diminish it. 

I think you put far to much weight on the power of brotherhood 
created among people of the world in relation to the Potter books. 
There are many people very tolerant of homosexuality who have come to 
the conclusion that the books have a very negative undercurrent and 
can't find themselves connected to the books now that the last 
installment has been released. The books might have triggered 
millions of people to read them but that surely doesn't mean that the 
books internal integrity is strong enough to facilitate a unison 
between the people of the world as you seem to envision. If the 
unison of readers of the world can be broken by the mere suggestion 
of something that doesn't fit their life ideology then there was no 
real unison to begin with, it was just an illusion that people could, 
based on the premise that in a perfect world things they object to 
actually don't exist and thus something they don't have to worry 
about at all. 

I understand the concept of your post because I too would like to see 
humanity function as one civilization, instead of one group trying to 
eradicate another for either being different or having different 
viewpoints. If we could see that all bleed the same no matter what we 
might look like, think like or behave like (and all those things that 
makes us individuals to begin with) then we could accomplish great 
things together and we have great examples in our history where the 
unison of people have accomplished tremendously great things. Where 
we seem to have had the power of magical accomplishments, at times we 
actually stuck our heads together but this will never be so if we 
keep embracing prejudice to create the illusion of unity. 
For example wasn't it great to learn that the people who helped build 
the pyramids were actually not slaves but laborers devoting their 
lives to help build humanity's greatest accomplishment of all times, 
which still mesmerizes the people of our time? 
My heart bleeds for all those soldiers in WWII, who were willing to 
give their lives to give us the chance to life in a free world. They 
didn't care what the personal background was of the person next to 
them because all dependent upon each other to accomplish the same 
goal. Most of these war veterans will tell you that the will to go on 
fighting was no longer just dependent on following orders from higher 
commands but it was all about fighting for the brother next to them. 
Giving up would mean giving up on those dependent on you for their 
survival and many of them still suffer from survivor's guilt and see 
those that perished as the real hero's of the war. 

Anyway don't embrace prejudice as a means to create the illusion of 
unity because it is based on a false premise that people can only 
unite by means of omission of the things they find unacceptable. 
People can only unite if they learn to accept that humans are humans 
regardless of anything else and value the lives and idea of others in 
the same way they like their own lives and ideas to be accepted. If 
you value the life of another in equal terms you value your own then 
you would never do unto others what you do not want others to do upon 
you. 

JMHO

Dana