Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! (1 Viewer)

[Chuck Mayer]

Again, I took that as a very poor analogy. I don't want to read into things like that.

The member earlier said he wasn't homophobic, so it could have been a poor choice of words.

 

[Ricardo C]

Sorry, Chuck, but I'm too used to seeing people deny being "homophobic" on the grounds that "phobia" means "fear of", and gosh darn it, they are not AFRAID of homosexuals. But they sure do dislike/distrust/just plain hate them.

Prejudice doesn't need to be grounded in fear.

 

[drobbins]

Maybe it was a bad analogy. Let me try to explain further and try not to offend anyone. That was not my intention and still isn't.

As a parent it is my responsibility to raise may children to be positive productive members of society. There is no universal right & wrong that the entire population will agree upon. Ricardo, you and everyone else, has a version of right and wrong. There is good & evil in everyone including myself. I would bet that if you have kids, there would be lifestyles that you would prefer that they didn't follow. Maybe a junkie or maybe a priest. I am raising my children according to my beliefs.

In my earlier statement I thought I made it clear that I worked with and respected a gay couple. Maybe I had already offended you enough that you didn't get that part. Once again I apologize. I have not put down or stated that gays are lesser humans than I am because I do not believe that. I do not feel that I better than anyone. My fly analogy was meant - that I found an unpleasant fact about something I enjoyed and I don't want that fact to tarnish the joy that I had.

I am not offended that you don't share my beliefs and lifestyle. As I guess that you wish that I will accept you point of view, I wish you to accept mine. As I said "Hopefully we can look past these differences that we will never agree upon, accept each other for who we are,"

 

[Mark-P]

Believe it or not most of the kids out there will be completely unfazed by this relevation. Many of them will probably say something like, "Dumbledore's gay? Cool." Look at how the audience reacted when she made the declaration. After a moment of stunned silence, they gave her an ovation.

 

[Ricardo C]

Sorry, Dave, but you can't say


and expect me to take it seriously. Your position seems to boil down to "I don't think I'm better than a gay man, but I find their sexual orientation unpleasant". Does not compute, sir.

 

[Mark-P]

I guess homosexuals don't qualify for that?

 

[drobbins]

Boy, I am not doing good at conveying my point of view. I will try one last time.

I do not like mint. I would not order an iced tea with mint in it. If I ordered a tea and found out after I had a drink that it had mint in it, I would be annoyed.

I can not relate to those who like mint in their tea, but I do not hate them. They are free to drink all the mint tea they like. If I don't like mint, I am not going to encourage my children to drink mint either. Mint tea drinkers should also allow me that same freedom to dislike mint. But maybe they can not relate to someone who dosn't like mint.

If you want to be offended or hate me for having my point of view and not being gay, that is your choice. I have no other way to explain my point of view.

 

[JamesED]

According to this thread, I'm a homophobe because I don't see the point of just now making Dumbledore gay. It was better off not explicitly said. I thought of him as asexual.

 

[WillG]

I wonder if this Dumbledore revealtion will be played up more in the remaining movies now.

But anyway reading about this reminds me of a curiosity I had concerning contemporary attitudes regarding Homosexuality. This quote in the story made me curious


I guess I wonder what it is about this announcement that warrants cheers and ovations. I'm not saying this out of any kind of derogatoty feeling towars Homosexuals. But I do wonder why this revealation is so special that it warrants that kind of reaction. Why does it really matter at all? I get to thinking that if Rowling had denied that Dumbledore is gay and that was met with the same kind of ovation, it would be deemed somewhat inappropriate.

I guess I don't know much about Homosexuality, but I always kind of imagined that even Homosexuals wouldn't want homsexuality for other people no matter how that may have accepted for themselves. For example, if a homosexual couple had a child, they probably would not want the kid to turn out to be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with homosexuality and I realize that for most people, it is not a choice. But, homosexuality has the potential to make one's life tougher and more confusing than it would be otherwise.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Ricardo, there is NO prejudice in this thread, just a discussion on a hot topic. And people are allowed to share their opinions. Prejudice supposes something is being denied to someone else because of a specific factor. Nobody is being denied anything here. This is just a discussion, and some people are being castigated (lightly, but still...) because of their opinions. Even though I disagree with some of those opinions, I find it a bit hypocritical to judge them for their beliefs. Isn't that what we're working against?

Besides, you get more bees with honey than vinegar.

 

[Malcolm R]

There seems to be an awful lot of animated discussion over this revelation that "shouldn't matter" and "has no bearing on the story."

If people were truly as open and unaffected by this as they're claiming, they would just shrug it off with an, "Eh, whatever," and move on with their life. Instead, they're somehow trying very hard to convince everyone that this revelation is a bad, bad thing, but also that they don't really have any overall problem with Dumbledore (or anyone else) being gay.

Thankfully, as Mark-P stated above, most young people will be the ones to shrug it off since they seem to be slipping off the shackles of poisonous intolerance and hatred practiced and preached by many of the older generations.

I think you're right. That's why I always have to laugh and shake my head sadly when people try and cast homosexuality as a choice (similar to what car you drive or where you shop for groceries). I don't know that any gay person would choose to be gay, given the hardships heaped upon them by society. And I'm sure that gay parents wouldn't wish for their children to have to endure it, either.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

I'd argue that intolerance merely enabled the conflicts...the wars were almost always for land, power, or influence. But that has little to do with this discussion

 

[Mark-P]

Thanks, Malcolm. And to further demonstrate this point, just read the discussion going on in this thread which is predominantly kids and teenagers. What a contrast there is between this thread and that one.

 

[Chris]

Hmm. I don't know though, this is where printed text sometimes doesn't convey the message very well. I really, have absolutely no problem with Dumbledore being gay. None at all. And, I'm sure someone very near & dear to me will be very appreciative of the note, and since I have no intent on outting them, I'll leave it at that.

But, that having been said, the problem I have is that it simply wasn't in the text, so by making any assertions post the text, it's just an assertion.. whether it's by the author or not.

I mentioned several pages before that Tolkein insisted until the end that "The Hobbit" contained no illusions to WWI, and he routinely dismissed the claim. It still however doesn't mean that those who read the book can't see where the war did influence his writing, whether he acknowledged it or not.

Kudos to Rowling for having such a well fleshed out world in which she can invision everything about her characters and have a proper backstory for all of them. That's the heart of really good writing. And, Dumbledore being gay makes a great deal of sense and makes much of his story fit together as to why it took him so long to face down Grindlewald, and how he probably managed to defeat him even though he had the wand that "could not be beaten".. which may have influenced his thought that "Love is the most powerful magic" because I feel as though the moment of that duel, a duel which he should have lost if the mythos of the Hallows was to be true, he won only because of a higher magic, the one time love between him and Grindlewald.

That having been said, that's the kind of flight of fancy an speculation that I think is so well done by the reader that for the reader it gives them a truly personal experience with a book. When you delve into all the minutia of all characters, it limits some of the imagination that the reader can bring to the character.

The above story has -always- made sense to me. I never thought of Dumbledore as gay, per se, but I always felt that his strong friendship with Grindelwald made sense and may have been the story behind Rita Skeeter's claim that the duel was really "not that impressive" at all, and more likely strong pleading from one friend to another.

Now, if tomorrow, JKR came out and said my thoughts on this are rubbish and she knows what happens, I'd pretty much say "fine, whatever. Spoonfeed me the whole story and I give up".

I love stories where I can fill in the cracks and where they take a very personal meaning to me. Think about some of the great books of history.. so many of them have elements to them that require the reader to imagine what it means or to come up with their own reason for motivations and purpose.

Was Juliet truly in love with Romeo, and undying love, or was she merely a girl who so desperately wanted to leave her cloystered life that the first shot at mystery, something that was not predestined was too alluring for her? Was Quasi Modo truly a tortured soul praying to be part of the world, or was he a being who had become a selfish monster who acted only for his own benefit because of his upbringing?

I'd prefer the authors not tell me. I'm glad they can't. I'll believe my story behind Grindlewald and Dumbledore, and enjoy it too. I have no problem with JKR saying it, but I have no problem with people saying it doesn't matter to them or they will continue to read the book as though it's not true.. because even if Rowling says it is, it is up to the imagination of the reader to determine that for themselves.q

 

[seanOhara]

I'm sorry, but this is absolutely wrong. Tolkien denied that Lord of the Rings (not The Hobbit) was an allegory (not an allusion) of WWII (not WWI). The allegory part is key -- allegory is not mere symbolism, but a rigid mapping of real things onto a work of fiction, such as with Animal Farm where Napoleon=Lenin, The Major=Marx, the Farmer=The Romanovs, etc.

Tolkien despised allegory because he felt it took freedom away from the reader to seek his own meaning from the book--what he termed "applicability" in the foreword. He had no problem with people relating the book to WWII, and if he were still alive he'd be quite delighted that modern readers are still able to find meaning relevant to the modern world. What he objected to was people claiming that "Sauron=Hitler; the Ring=the nuclear bomb; Saruman=Stalin" was the correct and intended meaning of the book.

Also, so far as I know he never denied that (or was even asked whether) parts of the story reflected his own experiences in WWI.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

To be fair, the audience was seated in Carnegie Hall in the Midtown Manhattan. Would she have gotten that same reaction at the New Orleans stop on her tour? I'm not saying she wouldn't, but I'm not sure she would.

At some point, this has to be considered a political discussion that is against the HTF's rules. Dave's position, for instance, probably has some basis in his religious beliefs. Is the HTF really the place to argue the legitimacy of someone's faith?

 

[Chris]

I will scold my college creative writing prof the next time I see them. Which, honestly, will probably be never. But I promise, I'll do it then

 

[drobbins]

Well said.
I apologize for this brief interruption in the thread "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and return you to your regular scheduled program.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Enough already!

 

[Martino]

If it were important to the story - it would have been in the story.

There were plenty of chances in this latest book to reveal this fact - and she did not. She could of had him dancing with another man at the Youl ball - but she did not. He could have talked to Harry about how cruel life is if you are a little different, but he didn't. This fact just is not important to the story at all.

This just screams to me of a publicity stunt - getting your name in the news....