I guess I mean, is Snape's love for Lily more explicitly romantic than Dumbledore's love for Grindelwald?

I don't think Snape's love was written explicitly, but I don't think it WOULD be written explicitly. I assume it was fully romantic.

And like Dana said, we tend not to assume a gay romance unless we're told there is one. NOW it looks all kinds of gay to me.

The thing I'm having fun with is the Dumbledor hating crowd. I always took their objection as primarily classist, now I wonder if it was homophobic too (or if in wizard world gayness is just too normal for that to be an issue)

I don't blame Rowling for avoiding the whole gay politics thing. She's writing about a boy wizard facing down an evil that is in all probability going to kill him. If she adds in "Oh, and Dumbledore's gay"--which is irrelevant to Harry--she's got to deal with all the reaction to that. It's an interesting character note to Dumbledore, but not necessary to the plot. Whether it was a romantic/sexual relationship or a personality dominance relationship doesn't change the fact that Dumbledore was firmly in Grindlewald's power for quite a while.

Whether it is or not, we're culturally conditioned to read it that way.

Yes, I know we are. My question really was factual, not point-making.

I really don't understand the hubbub over Dumbledore being gay. It's not in the text, and unless she writes another book in the Potterverse, it probably never will be. 100 years from now it will merely be a footnote in the annotated Potter, and not much else.

I agree with Kate and others that her statement is fairly worthless. Maybe she said it to get "gay points" now without having to earn them textually, or maybe it was just an off the cuff mention of a character trait that has about as much meaning as knowing Dumbledore's favorite color or flavor of tea.

maybe it was just an off the cuff mention of a character trait that has about as much meaning as knowing Dumbledore's favorite color or flavor of tea

That's how I took it. Some details (and in hers a lot, I'm guessing) don't make the story better or more viable. Some of those make it into the narrative, others don't. I don't expect she's wanting an award from GLAAD or anything.

And honestly, I don't really think she needs to earn points from anyone? I mean, it's nothumanly possible to sell more books than she does.

Victor, Stephen King is just going to see that as a challenge.

Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.

maybe it was just an off the cuff mention of a character trait that has about as much meaning as knowing Dumbledore's favorite color or flavor of tea.

See, as I understand it she was replying to a direct question about Dumbledore's love life: Had he ever been in love? (People also asked the same thing about Neville and about Hagrid, incidentally - apparently Neville ends up marrying Hannah Abbot.)

Trudy you just reminded me of something. In one of his introductions (I think to the unabridged The Stand), Stephen King remarked that he's often asked by fans to share with them what happened to characters in his story after the story ended. King jokes, like they drop him a line every now and then to tell him what they're up to.

I actually find it a little strange when JKR answers questions about her characters outside of the books. Not that it's wrong, or that she wouldn't be the best person to know the answers to these questions. For me, however, the entire character is contained in the story and any extra-textual information, even coming from the author, is virtually meaningless to me.

Mostly, I think she's just having fun.