Out with the gay card

If you haven’t heard the big news by now, not only are you on the fringes of hugely important Muggle media circles, but are, and I say this with a tone of certain tenderness and sympathy of the utmost kind, not the biggest Harry Potter fan. Maybe it’s finally time to quietly self-reflect on the important bits in life, yeah?

Or perhaps I should redirect this suggestion of quiet self-reflection to J.K. Rowling herself, author and architect of the “Harry Potter” series, or should I say, “She who just sold out so big it’s not even funny,” as it seems she has suddenly lost her mind and needs one major time-out.

That’s right, with one flamboyant wave of her own trusty wand gone haywire, Rowling disturbed the gentle fabric of narrative continuity and shattered the foundation of my well-established wizarding world. How, you ask?

“Dumbledore is gay, actually,” she announced last week to a packed audience at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Yes, you heard correctly. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and founder of the Order of the Phoenix is . homosexual.

I am upset, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the fact that Dumbledore is gay that has my panties in a twist. My issue is not about sexuality of any kind.

What has my blood boiling is the conniving and manipulative manner in which Dumbledore was “outed.” Was it the gaudiness of the presentation, as Rowling sat on a red velvet wooden throne as she made the announcement? Was it the nonchalant way in which she answered the question of Dumbledore ever having fallen in love? Is it the fact that there’s no mention of his sexual preference anywhere in any of the Harry Potter books that makes his newfound homosexuality that much more obscure? Something is not right here; something is quite wrong.

There on that gaudy throne, Rowling went on to reveal that in her mind – where, might I add, this extraneous escapade took place, because it certainly wasn’t anywhere in print nor anywhere in my mind – Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald.

Grindelwald! What was Rowling thinking? Of all the sodding wizards to have Dumbledore fall in love with! As a Harry Potter fanatic and connoisseur, I feel that to have perhaps the greatest wizard on earth fall in love with one of the most dangerous and dark wizards of all time, one of Voldemort’s predecessors, is simply blasphemous and, let’s face it, would change who Dumbledore was as a character.

The fact of the matter is that Rowling didn’t have the spine or the balls to include this very important bit of info in the pages of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book of the series that dealt largely with the life events of Albus Dumbledore. Now she wants to cause hype and hysteria by making her famed headmaster gay. Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Case closed. I don’t buy her antics.

And for the record, I have to say that my gay-dar did not go off. And let me tell you that my gay-dar is dead on, like, surprisingly dead on. I am that good; you can ask anyone. Albus Dumbledore: not gay.

Alexandra Bezdikian is a journalism senior with a knack for critiquing pop culture trends.