Our Dumbledore?

Two seemingly unrelated events occurred this week that have somehow merged in my head.

The first made worldwide headlines: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE IS GAY. Now, I first read this seemingly juicy tidbit in my local gay newspaper, The Washington Blade, and Rowling's quote actually ended with a laughing nod to "fan fiction." So I assumed, wearily, that once again a joke was being made at "our" expense. No one else seems in on it, however, so I'm wondering whether she was serious? Certainly, the passages being quoted ad nauseum suggest that there's some gay there if you're willing to ferret it out.

That bemusement at the world's willingness to reimagine a so-recently created and so beloved character gave me hope. It seems very few people have any real issue with the possibility that Dumbledore was gay.

My friend Kenny (and here we shift to item #2) would have found comfort in that. He was that little ferret in many ways--always looking for the gay in things. The thing about Kenny Hill, however, is that he also always looked for the joy. Yes, he got angry (when warranted) and yes, he might have been a tad too loyal to divalicious show tunes for my taste, but he always, always, saw the possibility and the hope in the way the world reacted to our lives.

So it's a sad day today as well. Kenny's vantage point, an AOL-based website called queersighted, fired him last week. (They actually laid off over 2,000 employees in yet another massive, bottom-line-focused restructuring, but still...) He sent his last blog post today, and the follow-up postings express a kind of confused bewilderment. "But the site was so good.... "

Queersighted and its "gayest editor ever" Kenny took on anything and everything gay, or gay-adjacent. And it approached it all with joy. Something Dumbledore was also able to do. Maybe that's a special kind of magic. Maybe there's something to that first story after all.