Was J.K. Rowling Wrong to Bring Dumbledore Out of the Closet?

J. K. Rowling brought Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter's mentor and headmaster of Hogwarts, out of the closet on Friday, October 19^th, 2007 at an appearance before Carnegie Hall.

When asked by a fan about Dumbleore's love life, Rowling paused and replied, "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." After a silent pause, the audience reportedly broke out in applause.

She then went on to explain that Dumbledore was in love with former friend turned rival, Gellert Grindelwald. That love, Rowling said, was Dumbledore's "Great tragedy."

In the end, Dumbledore was a man who had made a practice of providing only the necessary information, trusting the eventually that the entire truth would reveal itself at the proper time and all the pieces of the puzzle would fall in place. Throughout the seven Harry Potter novels, Harry continually struggled with doubting Dumbledore only to realize that in the end, Dumbledore knew exactly what Harry needed to do in order to be ready for the truth.

While Rowling knew that Dumbledore was gay all along, Dumbledore himself never revealed it within the Harry Potter series, leaving clues that pointed to the truth rather than outright revealing it.

'"You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me,'" Dumbledore says of Grindelwald in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the final book in the series. Not being one that easily bowed to peer pressure, it makes sense that Dubledore's swaying of beliefs could be due to love. Dumbledore goes on to say that it took him five years to finally duel Grindelwald. Though Dumbledore knew that Grindelwald was wrong in his actions and that only he could defeat him, only a broken heart would take that long to work through, not a broken friendship. Finally, Dumbledore led a long life without marriage or love interests.

All the clues to Dumbledore's sexual orientation were present in the Harry Potter series, waiting to be decoded by those whom it mattered enough to. And those who wanted to know about Dumbledore's private life had already found the clues, as threads on various Harry Potter discussion boards attest to.