JKR messed up........ no/yes

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 178403

Bunny:
> I appreciate all your comments, but those making excuses for why 
JK Rowling 'outed'
> Dumbledore, should consider that homosexuality in many countries 
and to many religions, is
> totally unacceptable and offensive.  I've been told that the 
response in India,  for example, has been hostile outpourings 
towards JKR and her books.  She knows her books are read in many 
countries by many cultures and she has certainly enjoyed the 
financial benefits of this. It's too late now but if she'd kept her 
mouth shut, it would have been best for everyone.

Magpie:
While it might be "best for some people" if she'd never suggested 
Dumbledore could be gay, there are other people think it's "best" 
that she said it because they appreciate having a character they 
love be gay (though perhaps they'd have thought it really best if 
she'd put a gay character in the books). Gay people are people too, 
after all. They're not automatically cut out of "everyone" because 
they're a minority. 

But if people think that everybody should keep gay characters out of 
their books--indeed, even not even suggest outside of the books that 
a character could be gay because nobody should be reminded they 
exist (apparently this is "shoving them in our face"), then I think 
it's far more for the best that she said it. Why should she be 
protecting someone else's desire to believe that gay people 
shouldn't exist if she doesn't agree with it? If she angered Indians 
who think being gay is unacceptable and offensive, she probably also 
pleased Indians who think it's acceptable not offensive--and are 
living with other people who think so. Aren't "hostile outpourings" 
themselves an explanation of why she might want to have this out 
there? I thought her books were supposed to be taking a stand 
against exactly that kind of hostile outpouring towards groups of 
people just because of who they are? 

Honestly, the entitlement just baffles me. Gay people exist. Some of 
them are brilliant, some of them are headmasters, some of them are 
English. Why one earth should anyone think they have less reason to 
be represented than any other type of person? I can completely 
understand and respect just not liking a revelation about a 
character. I wish she'd stop talking about any of this stuff. I just 
don't put it on some higher level than being angry at her sinking 
Draco/Hermione.

I understand that some people have different views than I do on gay 
people, and think that this kind of sexual orientation is something 
that has to be broken to kids gently when their older or just hidden 
indefinitely the way you'd hide unpleasant things like evil or death 
or abuse (oops, those are in the books), but to me it's like 
randomly suggesting that a perfectly ordinary group of people in 
society be hidden or treated differently as if they've done 
something wrong because someone else doesn't approve of them--even 
if the person writing the book doesn't agree. And I think that's 
needlessly hurtful to those people and harmful to society. I don't 
think a gay couple brings up explicit sexual issues to a child who 
doesn't know about sex any more than a straight couple does. It may 
be more complicated to explain things like where the children come 
from (ornot), but I don't think that makes it necessarily more 
adult. The children of gay parents aren't any more privvy to their 
parents sex lives than the children of straight parents. There are 
aspects to being gay that children can't understand until their 
older (the political disagreement, religious objections, aspects of 
sex in general) but there's plenty important to them they can 
understand.

JKR can hardly write the books to conform to every culture of the 
world at once. So the lesson I take away from "some people are now 
refusing to read the books or won't let their kids read them because 
they heard the author thinks one of the characters is gay off-page" 
is not that JKR screwed up by keeping people from reading her books, 
it's that that kind of attitude makes the lives of those who have it 
less joyful. They've shut themselves out of something they enjoy 
because what is to me needless prejudice was more important to them. 
There are beliefs that other people have that I don't approve of. If 
I decide not to read a book because of that that's my choice, and I 
wouldn't expect the author to court me. There's lots of people who 
don't like Harry Potter for all sorts of principles.

KarenF:
While I can appreciate gay readers wanting a character they can 
relate to in the series, or have a more representative balance of 
gays and straights in the story, but to have an openly gay character 
in a book likely to be read by children would be simply too
distracting and add nothing to the plot.

Magpie:
Would it really? It just surprises me that in a book filled with 
magic, dragons, goblins and Dark Lords taking over the world 
something as ordinary as a gay character is "too distracting." I 
thought DH was deadly dull, but even I find Harry's getting the 
Sword of Gryffindor more exciting than the fact that one of the many 
relationships in the book included romantic interest from one man to 
another. Or that Harry had conversed with a gay man more than once. 
This just doesn't seem like something that clashes with what's there 
in the least. She can include a nudge-nudge joke about man/goat love.

I'm not saying JKR must put gay characters or any type of characters 
in her story. And as I said, I understand not liking her throwing 
out information on the books this way in general. I'm just saying 
that a romantic aspect to Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald 
is no more or less part of the plot than any number for romantic 
relationships in canon if you don't have special rules for gay 
people. And I would say the same thing for Harry simply noticing a 
same-sex couple amongst all the straight couples in a scene where 
he's looking at the student body. Other writers have included gay 
characters in fantasy stories without it taking over the plot.

Shelley:
I wonder if the future of the Harry Potter fandom will go that way- 
for the sake of the love of Harry Potter if we will develop the 
saying "Not in my Harry Potter World" to accomodate those who want 
to keep DD as merely "mysterious, eccentric and unique", as he was 
described in the books and those who want to keep the now gay DD 
that Rowling described in the interview.

Magpie:
Sure. I think we already have that. There's lots of things JKR's 
said that don't exist in my universe. If somebody would rather have 
Neville do something other than marry Hannah etc. I think they 
should be free to do that, and free to make Dumbledore straight as 
well. None of these things are in the books so there's little reason 
to force yourself to make it your personal canon. Even JKR gives 
herself that freedom--she didn't feel she had to make Hermione's 
middle name Jane because that's what it had been in her head until 
then. 

I just don't consider wanting Straight!Dumbledore any more special 
than wanting Neville/Luna or Harry/Draco or a Ron who ditches auror 
training and winds up with his own Wizarding Wireless radio show. 

-m