Three months after the release of the final Harry Potter book, JK Rowling has jerked Dumbledore from the closet. Gay rights campaigners, including Peter Tatchell himself, have welcomed the revelation. But in reality Rowling's move is too little too late: she has sold both the issues and her characters short.
The Harry Potter world is a Daily Mail fantasy: almost every major character marries their childhood sweetheart, families have two parents, married since their schooldays, and the government is bumbling, bureaucratic and incompetent. Homosexuality has suddenly been thrust, belatedly, into this remote "utopia". Unsurprisingly, it doesn't fit too well.
In total, the Harry Potter series weighs in at around 3,400 pages - roughly three times longer than War and Peace. That's more than enough room to allow the books to speak for themselves - yet the sexuality of the principal adult character only emerged in a Q&A with fans. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is as much a trip through Dumbledore's past as a quest for the horcruxes. If there's space in the final book for so much of the life of Albus, why could JK not fit such a central revelation - his love for a famous dark wizard - into the text?
It's all too easy to take the cynical line that JK has saved her announcement until it's too late to affect the titles commercially. The books are out and sold, the film deals are signed, and the brand could not grow much larger than it has already. The books are sold in 200 countries, in many of which homosexuality is a controversial issue. Given the fuss raised already by evangelical Christian groups, it would be all too tempting to avoid further provocation.
If this is how the decision played out, it is a great shame. Bloomsbury and Scholastic, the books' publishers in the UK and US respectively, stood firm as Christian groups protested against Harry Potter's promotion of witchcraft and "paganism". The books feature a rich tapestry of murder, betrayal, torture and swearing - not to mention some mildly steamy romance scenes: "it was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair." Parental concern has become strange indeed if we will cheerfully allow children to read about murder but not an explicitly gay character.
Harry Potter is not a story about a gay head teacher, of course. But mentioning Dumbledore's sexuality within the books would not have changed this. Children's literature has already proved itself more than able to handle gay themes. Philip Pullman's superb His Dark Materials trilogy features a complex gay relationship (between angels, no less) with no loss of plot focus or commercial success: the film of the first book, The Golden Compass, is released this December. Wouldn't the story of Dumbledore's battle against the dark wizard Grindelwald have been even more powerful if we had known he was Dumbledore's "true love"?
Authors always know more about their characters than makes it into the books: Tolkien's son managed to publish 12 volumes of background material from the Lord of the Rings. Rowling has offered "several nuggets" of background information about characters to her fans since the last book was released - no doubt answering many of their niggling questions. Dumbledore's revelation could be just one more of those extra details. In a book for adults in the UK this would certainly be the case - few of us would really care about the sexuality of a book character with no love interest.
These aren't just books for adults, though - or just for the UK. With sales of 325 million worldwide, there are literally millions of young Harry Potter readers who will one day realise they are gay. Showing the respected, heroic and beloved Albus Dumbledore as fully realised gay character - whose sexuality was merely incidental to his achievements - would have provided a fictional role model like no other. With homophobic bullying still such a significant issue in schools, this is a missed opportunity with a real sting in the tail.
By dribbling out this relic of Dumbledore's past at such a late stage, Rowling gives us just a hint of what she could have accomplished for a still-vulnerable group. The Harry Potter series urges children to have courage in their convictions. It's a pity Rowling couldn't take her own advice.
