Outed

J.K. Rowling opened the closet door and outed one of the most popular characters from her Harry Potter series in New York City recently:

The question was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: "My truthful answer to you ... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay [ovation]. Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was ... [D]o we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair ... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, 'Dumbledore's gay!' [laughter]. If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

Jo also said after revelation: "I had to give you something to talk about for the next 10 years ... Just imagine the fan fiction now."

True, it really doesn't make a difference because we were not reading the books to get our rocks off. I guess that's the point...his sexuality was/is an non-issue. However, I cannot wait for an absurb response from kooky conservative (Christian) groups.


In other sexuality-related news: The Boys Scouts of America in Philly just got it stuck to them.

The city has decided that the Boy Scouts chapter here must pay fair-market rent of $200,000 a year for its city-owned headquarters because it refuses to permit gay Scouts.

Apparently, they had a sweet agreement with the city of Philadelphia where they only had to pay a nominal $1 a month for rent. Well, for years the Boy Scouts have exercised their right as a private organisation to discriminate against those whose sexuality they do not approve of. Fair enough, but they have also depended on donated or subsidised space for meetings and management, much of which was in public buildings funded by tax payers--even they gay ones.

City officials say they cannot legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates.

Also, fair enough.