The problems with DD being gay

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 178233

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" <delwynmarch at ...>
wrote:
>
> GG was very young when DD fell in love with him. If I'm not
mistaken,he was an older teen, just like DD. He was not an *adult*
yet. He was also very handsome.

va32h: But neither was Dumbledore.  There's nothing untoward about two
teenagers finding each other attractive.  But I gather you are going
for some sort of Humbert Humbert scenario where Dumbledore is fixated
on a certain age because of the nature of his first love?

> We now know, according to the interview, that DD dissimulated the
true reason he waited for so long to go after GG.
> 
> Now, let me remind you of another boy.
> 
> Tom Riddle was an extremely handsome boy during his Hogwarts years.
>We know that DD knew that there was something off about Tom, even
>before Tom set foot in Hogwarts. We also know that DD knew that Tom
>must somehow be behind all the nastiness happening at Hogwarts those
>years,including the murder of a student. And yet, DD didn't tell
>anybody* what he knew and suspected about Tom. He also failed to
>confront Tom directly at any time.
> 
> See the similarities?

va32h:

Well no, actually.  Dumbledore suspected Tom regarding the basilisk,
but did not know for certain, and it's very much Dumbledore's nature
to give people the benefit of the doubt. Also, Tom Riddle was very
well liked by Armando Dippet (Dumbledore's superior at the time) so
I'm not sure how much weight would have been given to Dumbledore's
nebulous suspicions. 

Dumbledore did speak to Tom directly - but in that Dumbledore way of
trying to get the guilty party to voluntarily fess up. 

> There's also the case of Sirius Black. Sirius, while in Hogwarts,
> deliberately sent another student to his death, but he was never
> seriously punished for that. Is it a coincidence then that
> Sirius happened to be another extremely handsome youth?

va32h:

Except that Snape didn't die, and we aren't really certain that Sirius
actually thought Snape was going to die.  Nor do we know if or how
Sirius was punished.  It isn't specifically mentioned that Sirius was
not punished at all, was it? 

And I suppose I could be flip and point out that Sirius and Tom were
both brunettes, whereas Gellert was a blonde, so clearly Dumbledore
prefers blondes.  

But it isn't flip to point out that Dumbledore allowed the adult Snape
to treat Harry and Neville rather badly without any repercussions that
we know of.  So does that mean Dumbleore had a crush on the adult
Snape too?  I doubt it.  

> If you add on top of all this the facts that:
> 
> 1- We've never heard of DD having ever loved a man, any man, any
> *adult* man.
> 
> 2- DD deliberately chose to spend his life at Hogwarts. Around
> teenagers. Lots and lots of teenagers. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.
> Compared to how many single adult men?
> 
> 3- We know that DD sometimes goes *invisibly* around the castle at
night.

va32h:

We've never heard of Dumbledore brushing his teeth or taking a bath
either, but I'm sure he did.  (We do know he went to the bathroom at
least once!)  Where in the course of Harry's story would it have been
logical to introduce Dumbleore's adult relationships?  I won't even
address the other two points because they are just too offensive IMO.


> Now where does that leave Harry? What do we know of DD's feelings for
> Harry? Well, he told them to us himself, didn't he? He said that he
> had come to "care" for Harry, that he didn't want LV to know that
> Harry and DD were "more" than student and teacher, and so on. And
> let's not forget DD's tear when Harry said that he was "DD's man,
> through and through": what prompted those tears, Harry's expressed
> feelings of loyalty, or the resonance that those words might have had
> with some romantic dream on the part of DD?

va32h:

Dumbledore's feelings for Harry are paternal.  They are so blatantly
paternal (IMO of course) that I can't imagine how anyone could read
them otherwise!  Dumbledore's whole speech at the end of OoTP about
Harry being too young to know his fate, wanting him to be happy, not
wanting to burden him with adult responsibilities - everything about
that interaction screams father-son to me. 
 
> And there's another thing that stinks. Look at what DD's love for GG
> made him do: it made him wait for decades before confronting evil,
> allowing countless innocents to be harmed and killed. How does this
> compare to DD's (and JKR's) message about Love and the Power of Love?
> DD keeps telling Harry that it's his ability to love which will
> eventually allow him to beat LV. But what did DD's ability to love do
> to him? It *prevented* him from fighting evil. DD had to set his love
> aside in order to be able to beat evil. How come the rules are so
> different in his case? Ah, yes: his was a gay love. Apparently,
> heterosexual love and motherly love fortify one against evil, but gay
> love weakens one.

va32h:

I don't think it was decades was it?  I thought DH said it was five
years between Grindelwald's rise to power and the duel. You know I
always thought Dumbledore was too hard on himself about the
Grindelwald thing.  Why was it Dumbledore's sole responsibility to
bring down Gellert?  Sure, Albus was the most talented wizard of his
day, but he wasn't the only talented wizard.  He wasn't a politician
or a warrior, he was a schoolteacher.  By the same token, I was irked
that everyone in the Order seemed to be waiting for Harry to come
along and save them too.  But I digress. 

I don't think Dumbledore had to "set his love aside to defeat evil". 
I see it as Dumbledore recognizing a higher love (an agape sort of
love of humanity) above his long-ago affection for an old friend. 

Sort of the same way Lily had to set aside her affection for Snape
once it seemed clear to her that he was heading down the wrong path. 
Lily was able to make that choice at a much younger age than
Dumbledore, but then Dumbledore never denied being a sentimental old
fool. 

va32h