The right to face the truth

So, you've heard that JK Rowling says Dumbledore is gay. Not much of a surprise, really; it explained a lot of his behavior as far as his "old friend" went.

Here's another not-a-surprise: the guys at Falwell's Liberty Universe aren't happy (my emphasis):

But some Potter fans questioned why Rowling would declare the character's sexual orientation despite not placing any references to it in the story line. Others are dismissive of the whole discussion.

"What's stopping her from saying that [Harry's friend] Neville grows up to be a pedophile," said David Baggett, an associate philosophy professor at Liberty University's School of Religion. The Lynchburg, Va., school, incidentally, was founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who eight years ago caused a stir by questioning the sexual orientation of the purple character Tinky Winky in the Teletubbies children's series.

Baggett, who co-authored the 2004 book Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, says he was taken aback not only by Rowling's announcement, but by the fact that it came on the heels of her confirming many Potter fans' belief that the series had Christian themes.

"It doesn't change my perception of the series, but it does say something about her choice to include this detail at that time," Baggett said. "Does she have the right to keep giving us details? I wonder what's the point, other than her staking out her agenda."

Yeah, you read that right: Baggett doesn't believe you can have a book with Christian themes and a gay good guy. He also goes straight to "Neville grows up to be a pedophile" as a comparison piece (instead of, say, ax murderer or embezzler - not to mention instead of nuclear physicist). Well, it's only to be expected of his sort.

But I'd like to examine that other thing he said: "Does she have the right to keep giving us details?"

If she doesn't, who does?

But that's not really what he's complaining about. What he wants to know is:

Does she have the right to make her fans live through the moment of realization that comes when someone you thought you knew turns out to be gay?

Does she have the right to make her fans face the fact that sometimes people they love are gay? Don't they have the right to pretend that Dumbledore is "normal"? Don't they have the right to continue to believe that no one they know is different from them? Don't they have the right to cling to their prejudices?

That's what he wants to know.

Now, I don't know how many people are both homophobes and Harry Potter fans. (See Baggett, above.) What I do know is that the people who are railing against this are trying to hard to pretend it's not because they're not convinced that being gay is awful, sinful, yucky, perverted, or damned - or all of those. People who immediately leap to pedophilia as a parallel have lost that argument before they've begun.

But let's be clear about what's really going on here. The whole point is that some people want "the children" to be protected from that eye-opening moment that comes when someone you know and love turns out to be (gasp!) gay. They don't want kids wondering how Dumbledore can be awful, sinful, yucky, perverted, and/or damned - because they know the kids will get it.

Kudos to Rowling for doing it this way.

And it's a bit surprising how many people are getting sidetracked about whether there's groundwork (like I said, I wasn't surprised) or whether the book is over or whether she is "getting a little too freakily obsessive over her characters" (yes, PZ, I'm looking at you) or whether fictional characters can even be gay... or whether it even matters. The point is how people are reacting to the possibility that he's gay. Because the kids love him - and that scares them - not the kids, of course. The bigots.

And that's what it's about. Not whether some fictional character is or isn't gay. Whether kids will look at gay people differently now. That's the threat.

That's the hope.