dear suzanne:
i like this rationalization:
"There is really a puckish impulse at work in Ms. Rowling’s declaration, a provocation evident in the books themselves. She sets the epic in a British school long associated with landed privilege and wealth. But throughout she undercuts the claims of that old world. Those who believe in the importance of ancestry and inherited powers turn out to be easily corruptible and morally blind - tools for Voldemort.
Her heroes are the hybrids, the misfits, those of mixed blood, all bearing scars of loss and love: the half-giant Hagrid, the mudblood Hermione (whose parents were not wizards), the poverty-stricken Ron, the orphaned Harry. Perhaps speaking of Dumbledore as gay was just a matter of creating another diverse rebel against orthodoxy."
"There is really a puckish impulse at work in Ms. Rowling’s declaration, a provocation evident in the books themselves. She sets the epic in a British school long associated with landed privilege and wealth. But throughout she undercuts the claims of that old world. Those who believe in the importance of ancestry and inherited powers turn out to be easily corruptible and morally blind - tools for Voldemort.
Her heroes are the hybrids, the misfits, those of mixed blood, all bearing scars of loss and love: the half-giant Hagrid, the mudblood Hermione (whose parents were not wizards), the poverty-stricken Ron, the orphaned Harry. Perhaps speaking of Dumbledore as gay was just a matter of creating another diverse rebel against orthodoxy."