...and don't give the colored folks anything significant to do or say.
That's what came to mind when I first heard the following news: J.K. Rowling Explains Why Uncle Dumbledore Never Got Married, from EW.com via Defamer.
Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore's love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, "I always saw Dumbledore as gay." Filling in a few more details, she said, "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us."
The second thing that came to my mind was this: Law and Order's Southerlyn Comes Out on Her Way Out, by Sarah Warn at AfterEllen.
In one of the most famous—and puzzling—conclusions to a Law and Order episode ever, Assistant D.A. Serena Southerlyn (Elizabeth Rohm) was unexpectedly outed at the end of “Ain’t No Love,” which aired on January 12, 2005, when she reponsdeed to her dismissal with the question, “You're not firing me because I'm a lesbian?”
Southerlyn’s unexpected outing is one of the few episodes in Law and Order’s 15-year history that has included a lesbian or bisexual character. Although Law and Order aired episodes about gay men beginning in its very first season, lesbians rarely made appearances on the crime drama until its ninth season in 1999...
To out Southerlyn in her final scene on the series feels a little like having your cake and eating it too: Law and Order gets to expand its diversity of characters and lay claim to a token lesbian among its cast, but avoid the ramifications of it because the character leaves the series immediately after her sexuality is revealed.
In the words of Stephen Colbert--after finding out John Edwards would be challenging his favorite son status in his one-state Presidential bid in South Carolina: What the bleep, y'all?
It's convenient that Ms. Rowling reveals this 1) with hesitation 2) after being asked by a child, 3) after the seventh and final book came out three months ago, and 4) after Dumbledore was killed in Book 6 by the gayest villain since Scar in The Lion King. Apparently it was a-okay for every other character in the Harry Potter series to be as straight as they want to be. But God forbid anyone in the books display any homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender identity, or hint of queerdom at all. It was fine for Ron to whore it up all through Book 6, having a purely physical relationship with Lavender Brown, while unfairly chastising Hermione because she had one date two books ago with Viktor Krum. Dumbledore could have at least alluded to a past relationship, or the special feelings he had for this Grindelwald guy.
I own all seven books, along with the four DVDs that have been released. That doesn't mean I have to like the WASPy, heteronormative patriarchal regressive world that J.K. Rowling ripped off from other books, movies, myths and legends. How original is it to write a fantastical story about an orphaned white Anglo boy who has to save the world? Yes, there's Hermione, the token girl; Kingsley, the big black guy in the Order of the Phoenix who functions as a bodyguard; and Cho and Dean, the vaguely ethnic love interests whose entire existences have been erased by Book 7, so that [SPOILER ALERT!] Harry and Ginny (who has no real personality of her own) can be together in holy white matrimony. The straight white guys get to have all the fun.