Homosexuality: Was: Snape as the lover of Regulus Black

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 154761

Carol:
> For all its applicability, which as Tolkien says, "resides in the
> freedom of the reader," prejudice in the WW is unique to that
> imaginary world, and some of it is not only understandable but
> inevitable. Perhaps it doesn't even deserve to be called prejudice.
> Who besides Hagrid would really want a giant for a neighbor? Or a
> troll, even if they can be trained as security guards? And even
> species with "near-human intelligence" like Centaurs and house-elves
> or goblins (all of them actually as intelligent as humans and at least
> as gifted magically) don't need the same education as witches and
> wizards since none of them use wands.
> 
> What's the answer? Discourage the use of inaccurate and disparaging
> terms like "half-breeds" (applicable only to a few characters in any
> case) and let them run their own lives (live and let live)? End abuse
> of house-elves and let them serve the human family of their choice?
> what else would a house-elf do? I doubt they'd go off somewhere and
> form their own society.
> 
> At any rate, as Pip!Squeak says, JKR has deliberately omitted
> questions of religious and racial prejudice because they would
> interfere with and complicate the types of prejudice she's discussing,
> including the important question of why those prejudices exist and
> whether, at least in some cases, that prejudice is justified.

Pippin:
I think what JKR has done is show us a world where bigotry, rather 
than that traditional Western bugaboo, lust, is  the 
universal temptation and the emblem of man's divided nature. 
In order to bring that off, sex and sexuality have had to be 
subdued, and all their attendant issues given short shrift, much
to the delight of fan fiction writers everywhere.

I don't think JKR shows prejudice as justified in any case, but rather,
to put it another way, a sort of original sin: an inevitable consequence
of being human. As childhood innocence fades away, we 
all come to regard some groups of people as more  dangerous than
others, though in truth every individual has the capacity to do harm.

Even the  good characters cannot escape prejudice. They can
only recognize it as something they will have to struggle with all their
lives.  The problem then is not only with the conventionally
wicked characters who reject the notion that prejudice is bad, 
but with the 'good' ones who falsely believe that they are 
untouched and prejudice is something that happens to other people.

This reflects the RW teaching that prejudice is indeed universal.
At the Los Angelese Museum of Tolerance, one can only enter
through the door marked 'PREJUDICED'. The door marked 'NOT
PREJUDICED' is, like some of the doors at Hogwarts, just pretending.

I wonder if JKR means to tie this to her Christian beliefs by
showing that  through courage and forgiveness for one's
enemies  one can attack prejudice at the root  and so resist 
the temptation to harm the innocent?

Pippin