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Posted by Anthony on August 5, 2009
I’ve been getting some hits on my site regarding a past post about Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore as ‘gay.’ I couldn’t figure out but having scanned the news a bit I guess I get it. Some readers have taken offense to my ruminating about Rowling’s motives in having Dumbledore as gay, wondering if perhaps she was just trying to stick it to Christians.
I don’t know if that was her reason. But my post rankled some people, getting me accused of being arrogant, egocentric, ignorant, and most bizarrely, a liberal Christian. Wow, can’t remember the last time that charge was leveled.
Like I said, I don’t know if that was her reason. Honestly, I’m still waiting to hear the reason. I’d love to hear the reason. If it was some ploy towards the ‘acceptance’ themes in her books, then the brave and right thing to do was to have outed him in the series itself, and not afterwards. Learning that he was gay adds nothing that I can think of. If someone is aware of any place where she explains this, I’d be happy to hear it.
But imagine my surprise when I read that I am not the only person wondering about Rowling’s motives and speculating that perhaps it was just to rile up a certain segment of the population. None other then Daniel Radcliffe himself, the actor who plays Harry Potter in the movies, said,
“I think it’s wonderful that Dumbledore was outed as gay … Half of me thinks Rowling just did that to see if she could p*ss off the right-wing, but I’m not sure how true that is. I think she had it planned, I think she always knew he was gay.”
That Daniel Radcliffe! He’s so arrogant, egocentric, and ignorant! Oh, and a liberal Christian! Can you believe that guy? Positing ‘dark agendas’ is just ridiculous…
Well, and perhaps it is. But the reason for the speculation is that the ‘outing’ is positively mystifying. Besides simply not adding anything to an understanding of the series, if anything it darkens it. For example, I actually read someone wondering if Dumbledore’s interest in Harry wasn’t exactly platonic, if you get my gist. Ridiculous?
Well, I would have thought so until Rowlings started issuing post hoc revelations re-interpreting the text.
Anyway, I don’t know what Rowling’s motives were (both in conceiving of Dumbledore as gay and in revealing it) and would be happy if someone could direct me to any statements of her’s that clear it up.
Posted by Anthony on October 20, 2008
Today is the official release day of Birth Pangs: Spero in hard cover! It is available through Amazon.com or through my book’s website at www.birthpangs.com.
Jean Heimann, who also reviewed Birth Pangs: Fidelis, was kind enough to write a review of Spero as well. Below are the opening paragraphs of the review followed by a link to the full review. She provides a link back to birthpangs.com at the end of her review.
Jean Heimann’s Full Review
Spero, the second book in the Birthpang series continues the adventure of the futuristic fantasy tale, which takes places in the United States in the not too distant future. Spero focuses primarily on one of the main characters in the novel, King, who, as a young boy, is rescued from the ruins of a nuclear explosion by the strong and courageous Tasha, who is fleeing an epidemic that has gripped the nation and wiped out large portions of the population. …
King and Tasha are eventually taken in by the Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma where they are welcomed and accepted as they earn the respect of their new family. Here King develops into a strong, courageous, and honorable young man, who is on a quest to discover his identity and his purpose in life in this new world. … In addition, he has been blessed with the gift of prophecy to guide him — to obtain insight and wisdom on his life journey and to assist others in decision-making in difficult situations; however, this gift in itself becomes a major challenge for him.
Similar in nature to the writings of C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein, Spero bears a Christian theme, includes Scripture passages, and is rich in Christian symbolism. The main theme in Spero, (which is Latin for “hope”) is hope vs. despair … In Spero, the things of this world which people often look to for hope – their government, their schools, and even their churches – are destroyed.
… Read the rest of the review
Posted by Anthony on November 7, 2007
The full response is pasted below, but you may want to download and print it off, or attach it in an email. If so, here it is for download:
If you would like to discuss this issue, please use my discussion forum, where this thread has been set up for that purpose.
Since this has been made available, my response has been featured on the ChristianPost.com.
Some people prefer a shorter treatment. I have produced a one page “parent’s guide”/bulletin insert. 
More information is available here and you can just download it, too, here:
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The “His Dark Materials” Series is Pullman’s direct answer to CS Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia.” Lewis intended to inoculate a Christian worldview using his series and it is clear that Pullman had the same idea in mind. Except in case you didn’t know, Pullman is a hardcore atheist.
Many Christians will focus on the apparent paganism, the hostility to Christianity and more precisely the Church, and some of the less than subtle sexual allusions. These would be the wrong place to put our emphasis. What Pullman aims to do is to offer a naturalistic explanation for anything and everything, including that which might be true in Christianity or in paganism.
He uses a mainstream interpretation within quantum science that posits that there are an unlimited amount of universes that exist and evolution working out in unlimited ways in each of them, so that one could allow yourself to consider almost anything as possible- without ever invoking a God.
It is this that makes Pullman’s series the threat that it is. Young people all over the place are going to school and university and are actually being taught in dogmatic terms that evolution is the real explanation for how we got here and it is only a matter of time before these students learn about the ‘multiverse’ as well as comprehend that scientists really take it seriously.
Thus, young people are primed to receive the atheistic worldview… they read it in high school as fiction only to have the main premises of the series shoved at them as straight science in college. Though the overt hostility to the Church, the pagan elements, and the sexuality are enough to make many a Christian’s blood boil, these are just symptoms, and we Christians should remember that.
For the full examination click the ‘read the rest of the entry’ link below. Or, to Print it off, download it in PDF here: Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on
I am currently working on a much lengthier reaction to Pullman’s His Dark Materials Series but I thought I would take a break and comment on this article that passed across my desk today from worldnetdaily.com categorizing the Pullman series as paganism. For example, this quote:
“Pullman has been quoted in interviews as saying he is an atheist, but that label is highly misleading. There is spirituality here, and it’s as blatantly occult as it gets. Pullman’s tales combine clever plots grounded in dark nihilism with a default pagan cosmology. Everyone believes in something, and Pullman does, too, whether he will admit it or not. The plot revolves around spiritism, magical thinking, mysterious visions, parallel worlds, and yet as always with pagan beliefs, they come off as glitteringly empty.”
I won’t dispute that ‘everyone believes in something.’ Nor will I dispute that there are elements that we would normally consider as ‘pagan.’ However, I believe the author of this article completely misunderstands the current strategy of the secular humanists.
If we take an example like Harry Potter, whom the author of that article also decries, the difference between the threats is easy enough to detect: Rowling did not present her series as potentially being reality, nor does anyone- even young readers- think that it might be, whereas in the Pullman series, what he presents is explicitly something that he believes could be real, and by connecting with claims that students will hear described as scientific (Ie, Evolutionary theory and the Multiverse), students are led to think the same. There is no line between reality and fantasy, here.
What is paganism but religion without revelation? The Pullman series is part of the new trend in secular atheism to take the claims of both revealed religion and paganism and show how they could be compatible with an atheistic world view. Everything that pagans and Christian theists might posit as evidence for the truth of their views are reinterpreted in naturalistic terms.
For example, in Richard Dawkins’s Delusion, he begins by pointing out that just because he is an atheist and an evolutionist, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t stand in awe of the universe. In the NBC television series, “Heroes,” we see evolution being able to produce people with abilities that we would have otherwise described as miraculous and supernatural. Indeed, in the latest episode, the characters talk about whether or not they are ‘gods.’
This is perfectly compatible with the Pullman series which allows that ‘god’ exists, but thinks of Yahweh as merely the first conscious agent that evolution produced. This, too, harkens back to Dawkins, who in TGD defines the ‘God’ he wishes to denounce as being Yahweh, or Zeus, or Baal… of course failing to understand the God of the Bible as a transcendent entity that is simultaneously immanent in his creation, non-contingent, and everlasting- much different than putative entities like Zeus.
This trend is also percolating up on the net. For example, an atheistic gent with a masters in philosophy tried to make the argument on my forum that even if we granted the miracles ‘as described in the Bible’ (by which he only meant Jesus’s miracles), we should still prefer a naturalistic explanation for those miracles. This is really identical to what Pullman is doing, except that his series argues that even the truths that pagans accept should be interpreted in naturalistic terms, too.
In other words, the current trend in secular atheism is to back off of the strident claims of past generations that mocked the human race for being seeped in religion and superstition, but to admit that they themselves are awed by the universe as much as anyone else, and further, to argue that any true thing we might find in any religion- revealed or otherwise- can still be understood in naturalistic terms.
I need not go into the fact that such a view is self-evidently unfalsifiable. If you interpret everything in naturalistic terms, it isn’t exactly an impressive argument when you say there is no evidence of the supernatural.
So, as much as I agree with the author of that article on the threat and danger of the Pullman series, I definitely don’t agree that it is a ‘pagan’ story or that Pullman himself has any interest in the occult. The real danger of the Pullman series is that it prepares the young, thinking person, to believe that even if Jesus rose from the dead, that still would not be evidence for the existence of God, or for the truth of Christianity.
Since we Christians follow Paul in 1 Cor 15 as pointing to the resurrection as the single most important validater of the Christian religion, one can see how one would prefer to have more pagans running around that would likely be persuaded if they thought the resurrection was actual than a bunch more secular humanists who are willing to concede the resurrection but interpret it within an atheistic framework.
As an atheist said on a discussion forum a few years back, “What’s the big deal that Jesus rose from the dead? With 10 or 20 billion people that have ever lived, the odds are that someone would come back to life eventually.” And there are more than 20 billion universes in the ‘multiverse’/many worlds hypothesis.
Posted by Anthony on October 30, 2007
Not too long ago I posted an article talking about Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore as a gay man. In it, I expressed disappointment and wondered what the point and purpose of this unnecessary revelation was. The battle still rages and I have got to say that many Christians are just being absurd. Not only with this, but also with the upcoming release of Pullman’s book in movie form, “The Golden Compass.” No one should misunderstand me. I definitely take issue with Pullman’s ideas. A fuller review is forthcoming on his books.
The problem is this: we do not win the culture battle by suppressing rival ideas ore viewpoints or trying to keep our children from ever hearing them. The solution is this: we show that Christianity can compete and can overcome rival ideas and viewpoints. But the purpose is not: purging all hint of sin from America. Impossible, even if all sin was out-lawed! The purpose is: saving souls. And I don’t mean just getting them sitting in the church pew. I mean really leading them down the path of redemption. The effect then may very well be a transformation of our culture, but let us never be confuse a side-effect with the actual goal.
So, with these thoughts in mind, I read this article on the ChristianPost:  Conservatives Urge Ban on ‘Harry Potter’ Over Witchcraft, Homosexuality. Here is a quote:
Upon learning of the “outing” of the Hogwarts headmaster, many Christians who formerly had no qualms about children reading the books have reevaluted the books.
Tom Barrett, editor of Conservative Truth, reported in a column posted Monday on WEBCommentary that he has discovered hundreds of posts in chatrooms from parents and grandparents who had encouraged their kids to read the books but are now “finally starting to see the light.”
“They have repented and have removed the books from their children’s libraries,” said Barrett. “They say they are trying to undo the damage they have done to the children by their exposure to them.”
Give me a break. Certainly, I am open to re-evaluating the books. As I said in my initial response to this whole affair Rowling’s odd revelation makes us justifiably wonder if there was more of an agenda behind her magical world than we thought before. However, if you take the text on its face, the text does not support that. Nor does the text support the idea that Dumbledore is ‘gay.’  Christians ought to care about sticking to the texts on things, especially those Christians who are Sola Scriptura.
The article further includes the contention:
“Over time the child can become adapted to the dark world of witchcraft and not even know that it is dangerous,” he said.
“As a cult researcher for many years, I have seen contemporary witchcraft packaged in many seductive forms, and Harry Potter is the best,” continued Roper.
“Potter makes spiritualism and witchcraft look wonderful.”
While non-Christians may see the tales as “innocent fantasies,” as Bennett noted, “Christians who understand God’s condemnation of witchcraft, which is prominent throughout the Bible, should know better.”
I would like to reiterate my contention that if we Christians are worried about young Christians being led into witchcraft by Harry Potter, the problem is not Harry Potter. It is our abysmal educational programs and anti-intellectualism and any number of negative descriptions I could put to it.  You might as well be telling Christians to take wet paper bags away from kids because they might not be able to fight their way out of them.
Does a young person’s inability to fight their way out of a wet paper bag speak to the dangers of wet paper bags or the pathetic physical state of the child? If a young person, after years of physical training, still can’t defeat a limp piece of wet paper, shouldn’t the Physical Education instructor be fired?
If Harry Potter is a threat to young Christians, every Christian educator should resign right now. Then, we should start over, because we have completely, and utterly lost. If our kids can’t even ward off the badness of Harry Potter, how do you expect them to fare as college freshmen when their biology professor gets rolling?
Boycotts and bannings are not the solution.  If there was ever a day when Christians could have eliminated its competitors from the field of contention, that day is passed. Arguably, trying to eliminate competitors actually had opposite effects that have come to hurt us.  For example, think of all the influential atheists out there with bitter feelings towards the church, and by the church they almost always mean the Roman Catholic Church.  Well, I can certainly agree with Pullman and Bertrand Russell on some of their views on what the RCC has done in the past. Imagine where these two gents- and surely others- would stand if they didn’t have a hostile and visceral reaction to things like the Inquisitions that clouded their ability to distinguish between the world view and those who say they hold that worldview? Things might be different.
Imagine the Christian writers and novelists and thinkers that might emerge in twenty to forty years if instead of knee-jerking at every ‘threat’ we actually mustered our efforts to show that Christianity was the equal to it?
Posted by Anthony on October 22, 2007
I have a lot to cram in here, so I don’t know that it is even worth trying. It may help if you go back to my first post on this subject. This makes my third post on the subject.
Something interesting I found today was this article here by a certain, aptly named, Michael Dorf.  I thought it interesting because he makes the point that just because Rowling declares Dumbledore to be gay, it does not make it so.  It cannot be supported by the text, which stands alone. I agree with this in a sense. One of my big problems with this is that it seems so capricious. I can’t see how this revelation informs the text. Perhaps worse, since no one else can see how it informs the text either, we are left to look at it all and wonder and make silly inferences like the ones I saw recently (and posted in my second article) that list the ‘top ten signs that dumbledore’ was gay.
But I think Mr. Dorf doesn’t quite get it. He seems to want to go out of the way to argue against an ‘original intent’ perspective on the US Constitution, saying that what Madison or whomever thought about the text, it didn’t ultimately matter. This is an entirely different situation. In this situation, there simply isn’t anything in the Harry Potter books that would seem to make Dumbledore’s sexual preferences relevant to interpreting the text (or so we thought!). But what Madison and Jefferson meant by ‘militia’ is certainly applicable, since in order to interpret the text itself we need to know what the words mean. Dorf would have us believe (this is my example, btw) that our modern connotations of a ‘militia’ being a fanatic group out in Montana should be applied backwards to the text. If our judges are free to import any meaning they like on the text that is the same as saying that the text doesn’t matter at all.
There are many things I disagreed with in his article, but those get us away from Dumbledore, so let me move on.
I mentioned that one of the problems is that since the texts contain no hint of the relevance of Rowling’s ‘revelation’ rather than promote ‘tolerance’ as she seems possibly to have in mind, it will do exactly the opposite. Check out this blog, for example. Just a brief quote will do: “The revelation had fans looking for new meaning in some of the passages.”
Is that really what Rowling wanted? What about these top ten lists which I think gays will think fuel conceptions about homosexuals that they would much rather not be spread around. I have already seen numerous innuendos suggesting that Dumbledore had a Catholic Priest-Like affection for Harry Potter. Surely gays (and certainly the Roman Catholics) don’t want it believed that a gay man in an educational setting is there only for the pretext of being exposed to young boys. Sure, I am against homosexuality, but that doesn’t mean I want to unduly smear gays.
But that is the sort of conjecture and joking that has been opened up by Rowlings. And completely unnecessarily, as far as I can tell. Which leads to my last thought. Just because Rowling declares it, does it make it so? It is an interesting question and one which I, as an author, have thought about in other terms long before this event. I think the critical difference is exposed in my reactions to Dorf’s comments above.
If the author’s revelation actually speaks to how a particular part of the text should be understood, then I think that the author can remain authoritative.  For example, perhaps the author did not originally write with enough clarity. Tolkien had a number of revisions of his Lord of the Rings book(s). If it does not speak to the text in anyway, not even as helpful background, I wonder if it can just be dismissed as… well… untrue.
Such ‘revelations’ could occur all the time. Next we might learn that Harry was sexually abused by the Dursleys.  This isn’t hinted at in the series, either, but given the abuse Harry received at their hands one could almost see it. But couldn’t such ‘revelations’ multiply forever? I am still waiting for Rowlings to clarify. I hope she doesn’t wait as long as her promised anthology/encyclopedia to show why she thought we needed to know this about Dumbledore.
Posted by Anthony on October 21, 2007
I blogged on this last night but still have thoughts on the matter.
Rowling indicated that her series were one long conversation about tolerance and as I skim the blogs I wonder if this is what she had in mind, a top ten list of ‘signs’ that Dumbledore was gay.The joke of course is that there was no hint of the question in the books and the irony is that if this is a component in her discussion on ‘tolerance’ it is very likely going to backfire. Here are just a few items because I can’t post them all here…
10. The Room ofRequirement actually was full of Chippendales dancers.
*Kept secretly reciting the “wingardium leviosa” spell towards male student’s crotches.
So will that be a new phrase for saying someone is gay: “He’s a member of Dumbledore’s Army.”
I could have gone my whole life without that bit of information…. now I am going to sit here wondering if all those weird contraptions in dumbledores office were really just for ‘magic’.
And of course, more like that. See, the problem is that I think we were all quite content not imagining Dumbledore as a sexual being at all, perhaps in the same way that we don’t like to think of our 99 year old great-grandmother as being a sexual being. Perhaps that is not a fair attitude to have, but it is safe to say that up to this point, there has been nothing in the texts to suggest that Dumbledore’s sexuality is relevant in the slightest.
Up to this point, that is. As the link I have provided shows, we will now be looking. Either this piece of news actually informs the text somehow and we are justified in using it to help understand the series, or it is irrelevant and its only purpose in sharing it was to thumb her nose at Christians, not realizing, perhaps, that many Christians have supported and even defended her books. But if it is the case that now we’ll be looking, I don’t think that’s going to have the effect that Rowling desired. The dogs are out.
On that link above there was an interesting thought that I myself was pondering. It was in the comment section. Here it is:I never once thought he was gay, and I still don’t. He and McGonnigal did have a thing for each other. J. K. Rowling is wrong…even if she is the author.
I don’t know about the McGonnagal thing, but I did ponder how much an author can declare ‘truth’ outside of the framework of their written world, and also whether or not an author can asserts facts from the privileged position of Narrator and still be wrong in their assertion. I live by the motto that you have to Trust the Narrator, but I think literary critics would say that authors can in fact make ‘mistakes.’ To some extent I agree, especially when the story has passed into the public domain.
If Rowling now says, “Harry Potter is actually a space alien from the moon” should we accept that as true because she is the author? I don’t think so, though I can’t put my finger completely on why (I have some good hunches).
Other examples where a story teller has botched things might include the ending of that movie “Pay it Forward.” There is no reason why [SPOILER ALERT] the kid needs to die at the end. It is so sudden and capricious and unnecessary, it seems designed only to reduce the watcher to tears. In fact, that moment had come and gone for me and when the kid got whacked I was so stunned by the manipulation that I broke out laughing. In the real “Pay it Forward” the kid lives.
It is interesting to think about.
