Posted on 10/25/2007 1:52:28 PM PDT by Teófilo
Folks, CNN, along with numerous other news streams, has been busy reporting "author J.K. Rowling's revelation that master wizard Albus Dumbledore is gay." Unless you are just waking up from a deep coma, you should know already that J.K. Rowling is the creator of the runaway "Harry Potter" bestselling book series and movie hits, and also recognize Dumbledore as the magician character who is the kind headmaster of the school Harry attends, as well as Harry's father-figure and principal mentor.
Much has been written against the Harry Potter series in the Christian googlesphere. Of note to Catholics, Father Gabriel Amorth, who has been variously described as being "the Vatican's Chief Exorcist" and "the Pope's caster out of demons," once said "You start off with Harry Potter, who comes across as a likeable wizard, but you end up with the Devil. There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books. By reading Harry Potter a young child will be drawn into magic and from there it is a simple step to Satanism and the Devil."
Many others, me included, dismissed all this criticism as unduly alarmist. After all, I reasoned, the Harry Potter series is a long morality tale: it is about good versus evil, where the value of friendship, loyalty, and telling the truth at all cost get center stage. I didn't read the books but really enjoyed the movies for this reason alone.
J.K. Rowling's outing of Dumbledore has thrown a curve against my reasoning. Although this "outing" occurred "outside the canon," that is, outside the published Harry Potter storytelling stream, presenting Dumbledore as "gay" sullies the original moral narratives embedded in Rowling's work. I think her move is regrettable, precisely because the moral, spiritual, and physical consequences of homosexual activity, by taking place outside of the storytelling will go unreported, remaining forever hidden from view and unanalyzed by her readers. By "outing" Dumbledore, Rowling presents her young audience with a whitewashed version of gay life, distorted thoroughly into a positive lifestyle and authentic means of expressing human love. Rowling presents Dumbledore to her readers as an accomplished fact with no past, no background, and aloof from the negative consequences of his actions.
Should I be surprised of Rowling's move? No. Rowling's a real rags-to-riches story and in order to gain access to certain exclusive circles she wasn't born into, as a noveau riche, she has to adhere to the standard dogmas of the glitterati, among them, that there is no God (unless She's a Goddess), morality is relative (except for the tenet "morality is relative," that's an absolute), and homosexual-persons-belong-to-an-oppressed-minority-deprived-of-basic-human-rights-and-needing-liberation-and-woe-upon-those-who-question-this-self-evident-truth, in order to be "one of them." Were she to deny any of these "progressive" and "compassionate" dogmas she would have been shunned as uncool and unworthy of cavorting with the other rich and famous.
Rowling is glamorizing a lifestyle which, as the Gospel teaches and the Church reaffirms, when it is incurred freely and with full knowledge of its intrinsic evil by those who partake in it, it is a deed that destroys the life of grace within their souls which jeopardizes the partakers' eternal destiny with God, who is the real true goal of our lives.
Her readers will have no way to know and understand the immorality of homosexual acts or to consider the more compelling yet opposing view: that God created sex as something beautiful; that sex is only to be engaged within the full complementary and mutual self-giving that only the chaste, loving, and joyful embrace between a man and woman, married to each other, can provide. For it is in this embrace that man and woman become "one flesh" as God willed it from the beginning. No other use of human sexuality will lead to mutual happiness and contentment except for the one God has ordered.
Therefore, if Dumbledore is unhappy according to Rowling, maybe it's because he failed to consider the real facts about sex, having decided to pursue in his youth a disordered moral path inevitably fraught with disillusion and unhappiness. Dumbledore, then, is a tragic figure indeed, albeit not for the reasons Rowling may want to sell us. But, alas, the reader has no way to know the alternatives but only what Rowling approvingly chooses to tell them outside of the Potter canon.
In one sweep, Rowling has completely undermined the "non-denominational" moral teachings of her books in order to conform to what nowadays passes for conventional wisdom, having now cast her stories through a narrow and constricting ideological lens. Many will cheer for her for it, but not I.
I hereby withdraw my sympathy and monetary support from the Harry Potter books and movies. I don't want my children exposed to flimsy moral teachings. In the past, I dismissed the witchcraft and sorcery contained in the books as so much fantasy and fairy tale material, giving the books and movies a pass because of their moral contents and fair-to-midland storytelling. But now I can't overlook the fact that Rowling wants to sell us an unchallenged, acceptable view of pro-homosexual "morality" in the guise of a likeable father-figure. That is beyond the pale and I won't stand for it. To me her books are now, to quote Father Amorth anew, the work of the Devil.
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stones"?
-Theo
Haven’t you heard? Young Huck’s relationship with N****r Jim has long been speculated to be homosexual, I kid you not.
I don’t see what you mean, he had time to atone and was acting on Dumbledore’s request. It was immoral true, but he did have time to repent (at least in theory since it’s not mentioned in the story).
Precisely what I was thinking. I'd rather this hadn't come, simply for reasons of taste - it was so nice to read hundreds of pages without having to think about homosexuality *even once*! (Well, there was Dudley's crack about Cedric's being Harry's boyfriend ...)
However, it seems to me to be a reasonable character development: late-blooming intellectual has a delayed-adolescent crush on a handsome young man. It doesn't work out. The intellectual then devotes his energies to the scholarly life, with generally beneficial results to other people, individually, and society, in general.
The real annoyance is the author's calling this character "gay," as if a single experience of a romantic urge toward the same sex was the defining point of a character. This is, of course, the whole point of homosexual activism - that this type of desire is the identity of the person.
As the mother of young people reading Harry Potter, this incident doesn't really bother me. My two oldest children (13 and 16) gave it a shrug and a chuckle. They're aware that people with homosexual inclinations exist. The younger children will likely not hear of it, as they don't read the news, and wouldn't understand if they did.
I never expected the books to be moral literature, in a religious sense, but rather general fiction in which characters exhibited both natural virtue and natural vice. There are moral lessons to be drawn by a reader, but that's true of any fiction; I'm on a Henry James binge right now, speaking of natural virtue and vice.
Perhaps but I doubt it. She probably wants to be invited to Sir Elton's castle.
J. K. Rowling: “Dumbledore” without the “ledore”.
Well, what does it matter if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?
___________
A tad melodramatic under the circumstances, don’t you think? We’re talking about a fictional character.
The Harry Potter novels already contain murder, kidnapping, torture, slavery, child abuse, theft, lying, animal cruelty, voyeurism, interspecies lust, underage drinking, bad table manners and inter-racial dating. Why not add sodomy? They’ll be just like the Old Testament.
I was talking about Rowlings.
This would also imply that simply experiencing a homosexual attraction is a deadly sin. I don’t know of any Christian tradition that teaches this.
(I will note that the Harry Potter books also contain misplaced modifiers and errant commas, like this post.)
I don’t know of any Christian tradition that teaches this.
I'd suggest reading the Bible instead of Vatican Position Papers.
There’s a split infinitive in “Prisoner of Azkaban,” too.
Why, I beg your pardon! Is that you, Rev. Phelps?
I know it! I was on the treadmill when I saw it, and I dropped the enormous tome on my foot!
“Gen 19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, [even] the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
Gen 19:5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where [are] the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.”
A rereading of this story does suggest that maybe the men were spies for the attacking army.
Leviticus uses the same term for homosexuality as it does for the consumption of shellfish - abomination. Does that mean eating a shrimp cocktail is a deadly sin?
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