by Lowri Ann Davies

Created on: August 23, 2008

Having grown up reading Harry Potter I really was shocked to discover that JK Rowling intended Dumbledore to be Gay. I have read every single one of the Harry Potter books cover to cover, many times and it simply never occurred to me that this is what she had intended. In true honesty as a child and teenager the sexual preference of Dumbledore had never been a question that I desperately needed answering from the book.

I really thought it was quite inappropriate for Rowling to announce Dumbledore's sexuality officially, simply because by doing this she revealed parts of the plot that were intended for adult audiences who understand homosexuality thus beginning to erase the childish, innocent and imaginative essence of Harry Potter that it first was. Also it I think it disfigures the perception of Dumbledore by children because in literature you build the characters from the page and into your own imagination and as a child a character's sexuality doesn't impinge on the creation of the character in your own mind.
I think this is where Harry Potter falls down because now I feel like Rowling is trying to please too many audiences and trying too hard to include worldly equality and 'political correctness', and by doing this really Rowling is kind of insulting as, to me it seems like she has included this passing comment about Dumbledore's sexuality as a way of ensuring she ticks every 'equal opportunities' box.
It was intended in the beginning to be surface deep enough to be classed as children and young people's literature in the wonderful way it provides for and overactive imagination and feeds into childish fantasies and myths. Now after growing up with Harry Potter I feel Rowling is tampering with the innocence of the books by introducing such elements that don't really exist in a child's imagination such as things like obsessive love and in this case the question of a persons sexual preference. I feel now that she's trying too hard to reveal depths in the book that- OK, she may have put there intentionally but, she could have just left it to the capability of the adult audiences to decide whether Dumbledore was Gay or not so that the books still had their innocent appeal.
I'm not saying that children shouldn't see that the world is made of homo and heterosexual people but I think that they should have been left to decide this for themselves as their perceptive and worldly wise mind grew naturally instead of having it thrust onto them in a public broadcast.

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