Dumbledore gay outing sullies Potter's morality tales

Vivificat! - News, Commentary, Opinions and Reflections from a Personal Catholic Perspective ^ | 25 October 2007 | Teófilo

[Jeff Chandler]

Insert “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” joke here.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stones"?

[Teófilo]

Let’s see, an old, unmarried British guy who spends all his time hanging around adolescent boys in an exclusive school, wears a big flouncy hat and a skirt, and is named “Albus”. Of course he’s gay!

[Teófilo]

Thank you all for your comments on this thread. I appreciate it. Commenters on the blog have been less than appreciative, but I expected that. It's part of a writer's job description. Thanks!

-Theo

[beachdweller]

Haven’t you heard? Young Huck’s relationship with N****r Jim has long been speculated to be homosexual, I kid you not.

[beachdweller]

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).

[Tax-chick]

So what we have is a celibate, chaste man who experienced homosexual inclinations. He overcame them as he overcame his lust for power and ruling over others.

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.

[HarleyD]

Maybe Rowling believes that this is how people with homosexual inclinations should live, but she can’t say so straight out.

Perhaps but I doubt it. She probably wants to be invited to Sir Elton's castle.

[Ebenezer]

J. K. Rowling: “Dumbledore” without the “ledore”.

[dmz]

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.

[CholeraJoe]

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.

[HarleyD]

We’re talking about a fictional character.

I was talking about Rowlings.

[Tax-chick]

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.

[Tax-chick]

Today, it's the bad table manners that really bother me. Why can't kids (the same kids who are always whining that they're hungry) just sit at the table and eat the food they've been nagging for, like civilized people?

(I will note that the Harry Potter books also contain misplaced modifiers and errant commas, like this post.)

[HarleyD]

This would also imply that simply experiencing a homosexual attraction is a deadly sin.

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.

Were the men "homosexually attracted"? Yes. Was it a "deadly sin"? Yes.

I don’t know of any Christian tradition that teaches this.

I'd suggest reading the Bible instead of Vatican Position Papers.

[CholeraJoe]

There’s a split infinitive in “Prisoner of Azkaban,” too.

[Tax-chick]

Why, I beg your pardon! Is that you, Rev. Phelps?

[Tax-chick]

I know it! I was on the treadmill when I saw it, and I dropped the enormous tome on my foot!

[Unassuaged]

“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.

[Mikey_1962]

The woman is richer than the Queen of England.

Of course by the Queen of England you mean Elton John...

[CholeraJoe]

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?