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JK Rowling defends character's sexuality
JK Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter series, has defended her gay character, Albus Dumbledore in an interview with the Student newspape
Rowling openly talked about her decision with Edinburgh University Student Newspaper and also addressed fundamentalist Christians in the US currently in the process of banning her books.
"Homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act," she said in the interview.
"There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary.
"The issue is love. It's not about sex. So that's what I knew about Dumbledore.
"And it's relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love.
"He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrusting of his own judgment in those matters so became quite asexual.
"He led a celibate and bookish life."
Rowling further explains by saying: "from the outset obviously I knew he had this big, hidden secret, and that he flirted with the idea of exactly what Voldemort goes on to do, he flirted with the idea of racial domination, that he was going to subjugate the Muggles. So that was Dumbledore's big secret."
The character, Dumbledore, is the headmaster of the wizarding school of Hogwarts which Harry Potter attends. Rowling revealed his sexuality at a book reading in New York when an audience member asked if the character had ever found true love.
Rowling, 42, has made an estimated £545m writing the seven series novels about the Harry Potter, the boy wizard.
Dumbledore, played by the late Richard Harris in the movies and then Michal Gambon was killed in the sixth book.
In the seventh book his spirit makes a few appearances and it is then that it is revealed that he fell under the spell of the evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald. As a result of this revelation and the response at the book reading, evangelical Christians have called for her works to be banned.
"Fundamentalism is, 'I will not open my mind to look on your side of the argument at all. I won't read it, I won't look at it, I'm too frightened,” said Rowling in the Student interview.
"That's what's dangerous about it, whether it be politically extreme, religiously extreme.
"In fact, fundamentalists across all the major religions, if you put them in a room, they'd have bags in common! They hate all the same things, it's such an ironic thing."
