Most fans applaud Rowling's "outing" of Dumbledore

By Solarina Ho

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) - The Muggle, or non-wizard, world is agog at author J.K. Rowling's bombshell announcement that one of the main characters in the Harry Potter books was gay.

By Monday afternoon, after a weekend of gossip about Rowling's "outing" of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, there were almost 6,000 comments on the issue on two popular Harry Potter Web sites, www.leakynews.com and www.mugglenet.com.

"Mostly people are happy that she has done this," said Melissa Anelli, webmistress of the Leaky Cauldron site, admitting that the site has seen a small subset of vocal readers unhappy at the revelation.

"I think it's great, I think the way she handled it was that this was just another fact about him, the same way that he's a teacher, he likes bowling, chamber music. And if more people were like that, we'd have less of a problem today."

Rowling unveiled her news in New York's Carnegie Hall on Friday, in answer to the question of whether Dumbledore -- a believer in the prevailing power of love -- had ever fallen in love himself.

"I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," she replied, explaining that Dumbledore fell in love with his brilliant friend Gellert Grindelwald, who later became a powerful dark wizard whom Dumbledore defeated.

In the book that describes their friendship, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", one character says the two "got on like a caldron on fire."

"To have one of the coolest, most respected wizards in history and mentor of Harry Potter as gay, is the bravest move JKR has ever made. I salute her," a fan identified as "Shain" wrote on the Leaky site.