(most of this doesn't apply as much here since you guys are smart enough to ralise that gay != omgskeery, but yeah. must. have. rabies.)
Dearest, DEAREST Helen Lovejoy wanna-bes kerfuffling over Dumbledore:
Seeing as the man never shags anyone in the books, I don't see the goddamn problem with his having left the proverbial wardrobe. If there was explicit wizardporn in the series, your whining about 'material inappropriate for children' would have a basis.
But there's not, so it hasn't got one. (And any of you who are screaming about inappropriate conduct around Harry: you are damned liars, and damned perverts. ♥ And not the good kind of perverts either! If this subtext-happy slash-and-sapphic author can't find it, it's likely a figment of your diseased homophobic little imagination!)
Chances are your kid knows damned well what 'gay' is already (thanks, internet) and is a far shot more accepting of it that you are. So - who's the 'child' in this equation?
The world is not going to screech to a halt and the queers are not going to scramble back into the closet just to appease your delicate sensibilities. I've had it up to my nostrils with whimpering, cowardly, bigoted snivellng rodent-people who consider two men or two women HOLDING HANDS IN PUBLIC to somehow be more profane and obscene than full frontal heterosexual parkbench dry-humping and tonsil hockey. I've had it up to my HIPPOCAMPUS with their vehement insistence that I must tolerate their ass-haberdashery. Oh heavens, yes, I'm dreadfully intolerant. I'm a dickophobe. I have an irrational fear of wang-spangles who've only got one firing brain cell, and whose social awareness is lost in the arse-crease of the 1950s.
Leaning on religion in this case is useless: your denomination is just as much a choice as you claim same-sex relationships are. Check and mate. Don't wave about your so-called 'faith' near me; I have no tolerance for fake Christians who use the name of God as their flag of hatred, either. The Bible does not say 'love thy neighbour unless he's a big homo'. The golden rule applies to everyone, regardless of their Kinsey Scale level. Got it? That should be crystal-clear. If it isn't yet, e-mail me your home address so I can beat you wth the Terrifyingly Enormous Gilded Antique Copy of the Good Book; I'm sure my boss will let me borrow it from work. ;P
I fell in love with a woman once. I am not ashamd to admit that. If you think that this admission has 'no place' on my journal, get out. ♥ If you think that the mere presence of a person from any given LGBTTQ category in the media is obscene, get out. If you think that homosexuality is inevitably a sign of paedopholia, get the fuck out right now, and learn what 'correlation != causation' means. I'm not going to stand idly by while mental dwarfs whine about what a fictional character did in the bedroom before he was 150-something and offering Harry a sherbet lemon. (That's not an innuendo, either.)
Your faith is between you and God. If the queerness of someone bothers you, take it up with God. A gay man is like any other man; a lesbian woman is like any other woman. Bisexuals are poeple, transgendered folk are people. Chances are they wouldn't care to do you anyhow, o ye shivering ones, so put away that spot of narcissism, if you please. Being flirted with never killed anyone, and you can easily turn someone down politely. Say it with me: 'no thank you.'
No person is obliged to remain in the closet to appease the antiquated sensibilities of the bigoted. The end.
Welcome to the twenty-first century. Welcome to a world where we recognise the oneness of humanity once and for all. If you cannot take that, that's your tough luck! Time waits for no one. Change is inevitable. Stagnation is death. Get off your ass.
Boom shanka,
-Y. Pants
P.S. If you're annoyed with the way Dumledore was outed in a literary sense, feel free to be annoyed, but whining about omg the gay is pathetic, and people who fear the queer probably shouldn't be hanging around the LJ of a kinsey 1 leftie hippie anyhow. I'm not going to pretend I didn't love M,. I'd never pretend I don't love P, either. LGBTTQ != sexual abuse, paedophilia, bestiality, or any other 'slippery slope' bullshit shovelled up by the bigoted and cowardly. Full stop.
Grow up, society.
P.P.S. Difficulty with LGBTTQ out of faith is something I do have sympathy for (heaven knows I had a breakdown about how I felt for M), but the fact remains: LGBTTQ people are -people-, and sooner or later one must accept that they have the same right to BE as any other human, regardless of what dogma dictates.
