What a shock!

I can just imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the churches of the Midwest US.

Yep the Americans would loooove that.

Good on you JK to announce this after you've made a mint from the Yanks. I wonder how many sponsors will fall when making the next set of films which personally I believe should be shot at the same time in a similar fashion to Lord of the Rings.

#4, are you kidding. Millions of homosexuals will be buying the books to see if the can find evidence of other characters being homosexual. In the next films the sponsors will be falling over themselves to invest if one of the characters is openly homosexual.

JKR has just made herself another few hundred million dollars, and kept the Harry Potter books on the front pages.

Now, if one of the characters was a black, disabled, lesbian artist......

whoaaa... okay, i'm a little upset with the ways ppl are saying that Americans would be really pissed about this... theyre NOT. we really couldn't care less. If this is about Bush's anti-gay marriages, pretty much everyone in the US thinks its BS. Do you know how many homsexuals are IN the Us? so please, don't state opinions about things you wouldn't even understand. Thanks.

It's great news and all, but reply implies that you can't have a one true love as a gay man. It's good news/bad news.

Marit,

I am sorry, but your offense taken to the comment belies your ignorance of your own country. The majority of Americans do not support homosexual rights in general or gay marriage in particular. In Tennessee, for example, though I admit it is a very conservative state, over 90% of the population voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. This same amendment was passed in many other states, and polls show that a strong majority still proudly put forth their bigoted views.

WOW - a 'fictional' character in a writer's view is 'GAY'. KNOCK-OFF 'GORDO BROWN'S' pronouncements of the BRITTS leaving IRAQ from the front pages of the 'news' and television broadcats! This is infinitely more 'important' than stories of the QUEEN's 'corgies'! DIANA's inquest will just have to wait - she may have had 'sex' with ELVIS - DUMBLEDORE that is! Forget the 'FAILING HEALTH CARE SYSTEM' - DUMBLEDORE will fix everything because he is 'outed' as being 'GAY' - now that's what we call 'wizard' eh???

Yes, Turambr85, but Massachusetts, on the other hand, allows equal marriage. I know several gay people with husbands and wives, and in higher education, at least, we generally support gay marriage. I go to Northwestern University, and, though I'll likewise admit that prestigious academic institutions generally inspire more liberal views than do others, I very, very rarely come across a person who doesn't support gay rights. It really depends on the region.

Also, although you might say that most states don't support gay marriage, most of those states are hick states without much population. If you look at the percentages of people in the US as a whole, you're likely to find more people who support gay marriage, though not a majority.

I'm a little upset that the rest of the world makes so many generalizations about the level of tolerance in the US.

Also, I'll likely be studying in Edinburgh or London junior year, which is our third year (or Berlin, or Oxford, if I can get in). It will be very interesting to hear European views on the US . . .

The following statistic is from ABCNews.com

"Among all Americans, 58 percent say gay marriage should be illegal, but fewer, 42 percent, say it rises to the level of amending the U.S. Constitution."

So, it seems, as much as I hate to think it the case, that the majority of Americans are against gay marriage, rather than being the enlightened academics that you suppose them to be, and that I wish them to be.

Though, I admit, it is good news that only 42 percent want an amendment, but also consider what the numbers don't mention, that a percentage may also have abstained from voting, claiming themselves un-decided. And, if this is the case, the 42% of the population may actually be close to half of the country, at least insofar as it comes to voting one way or another.

Of course The Head Master of Hog Warts School is GAY! All the beautiful art, The Holiday spreads where absolutly fabulous!! Let us not forget his Dandy wardrobe, and of course his best friend is a sexually frustrated old school marm. It just makes sense

I AM surprised that the Daleks have not jumped in with their assinine, right-wing, fundamentalist verbal diarrhea.

Dumbledore is not my type. Is he anybody's type - gay or straight?

Too cocksure and sincere. Give me a break from his all-knowing confidence and other-worldly airs.

Dumbledore is gay?!?! Wow, though now that I look back I can certainly see it. Well I guess hindsight's 20-20.

I wouldn't worry about the Americans, only the crazy ones are going to be flipping out about this, and contrary to popular international belief Americans are not all crazy. The sane ones just let the crazy ones run the country because it saves us a massive headache.

If J.K. Rowling does encounter any problems with the crazy American faction I suggest she does what the sane Americans have been doing for a long time. Nod and smile understandingly, then ignore them, trust me they never shut up.

I am not arguing that a healthy percentage of Americans are total retards, but I think this won't change much. The doulbe-dipped, mouth-breathing christians in the south already think that the Harry and company are friends w/ satan so finding out one of the characters is gay will merely reinforce their delightful crusade against reading and/or learning.
I am eagerly waiting to see what 'snape kills dumbledore' morphs into on the web, though:)

Some of you are right. The others are so far right they make Hitler look like Mother Theresa.
In the US 80% of the citizens are "straight". The ther 20% are so diverse that it is difficult to break down the numbers. The 80% mostly fear what they do not uncerstand and try to legislate it away. That stance includes witchcraft, homosexuality, skin color, religion, wealth and tens of other classifications. Even as King George Bush is ruling with the iron fist, Americans are fighting over whether two adults should have the rights and freedoms expected by the 80% simply because of their birth. How does this make sense to anyone. No wonder the US should be pitied by the rest of the planet.

Just goes to show how powerful a comment like this can be and just how far it can go in an instant- how quickly did this discussion jump from a fictional character and ticket prices to American politics? Almost unbelievable.

In which case, it now makes even more sense that they gave the role to the openly and highly articulately gay Sir Ian McKellen, who replaced Richard Harris as Dumbledore in the 3rd Harry Potter movie. I wonder if Harris realised that he had been playing a gay role all that time?

Mind you, gay actors have been acting straight roles forever, far more rarely vice versa (e.g. Brokeback Mountain where two straight actors played gay cowboys). Most commonly, in mainstream society, gay people have played the ultimate theatrical role by pretending to be straight so as to avoid all the hassle it heaps upon them. Thank God this is finally changing rapidly for the better in the civilised world.

Good on JK I say! One of Edinburgh's great citizens.

Hopefully, most of the idiots around these parts who would flip out over so insignificant an issue as Dumbledore's homosexuality jumped ship when they decided the series was nothing but Satanist mind washing.

What's important is that thousands of American kids have already read and fallen in love with the series. I can't see any extremists changing that fact.

A few things:

First, about my bible-thumping-idiot-compatriots-who-have-a-knack-for making-me-look-awful: did anyone learn anything from those books? -bigoted fools, by any definiton, are just that, no matter where you are: bigoted fools. Their time will come, the pendulum shall swing, and just like the end came for Dolores Umbridge or the Malfoys. It shall come: nobody gave a fiddler's fart what they thought, and I would venture to guess after the events of the last book the tables turned and they became the pariahs.

Second ,King George: My dear Scots and Brits, you are presuming that man can read! He makes Homer Simpson look like a Nobel Laureate! Harry Potter would be a stretch for him, and ironically his cronies should pay more attention to 1 Cor 13:4. Nowhere does it say love is straight (or an issue that can create enough fear mongering to get elected.)

Third, 80% may identify as straight, but the truth is that the younger generation is coming out earlier and more frequently-the number shall thus change soon. The only place (interestingly enough) where this is untrue are where the loonies are most populous: the Deep South (anyone remember what happened last time they bet on an ideological horse, say, the 60s?) These red states typically vote as a block, the midwest less so-you do the math as to what shall come.

Last, Albus: Hmm, I think we all should have wondered at how Gilderoy Lockhart got the job: he pointed his wand, yelled obliviate, and then all he had to do was bat those baby blues. (He was also, like Grindelwald, a blonde...poor Albus :)

#20 Sorry for the late comment but don't you mean Sir Michael Gambon not Sir Ian McKellen of LoTR and X-Men fame.

Besides... If the majority of the American's believe the bible is real then we're all in trouble!

#23, no I believe I am correct, please check out BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1651390.stm
and The Sun: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/arti...

I don't see why Dumbledore being gay should change the entire view point of the books. It was never mentioned, nor is it relevant towards anything. It's a trivial fact that shouldn't lead to political debates and the % of whose straight and whose not and where. What was important about Dumbledore was that he did what was right when he was surrounded by people corrupted with fear.(Not that he's a real person or anything....)