Can I please exercise my right not to care?

Did you hear Dumbledore is gay?

Excuse me, but you’ve obviously mistaken me for someone who gives an expletive deleted.

I haven’t read the Harry Potter books, but evidently there isn’t the slightest hint in the text about Albus Dumbledore’s sexuality, since it was never an issue until the author brought it up, for reasons known only to herself.

It doesn’t advance the plot, nor does it seem a symbolic stand-in for any group – such as Ian McKellen insisted on reading into his character in “X-Men”. What’s the point? J.K. Rowling is already a billionaire, does she want to be a great Social Philosopher as well?

Sherlock Holmes fans are forever doing the same thing with their hero: inventing amorous interests, hetero- or otherwise. They can’t accept that the Holmes stories are detective stories, adding a romantic interest adds nothing to the main theme of solving difficult problems with brilliant deduction.

Well, please forgive me but I am about to say something horribly cruel to the gay lobby – I don’t care.

Long ago hetero men with my attitude would have been considered the ultimate goal of the “gay liberation” movement. I don’t care what your private life is like – as long as it’s private, and I expect to be treated the same.

When I was single, the existence of gay men just meant to me that the pool of unattached females was bigger. Now that I’m happily married, it’s simply of no relevance to me at all.

But evidently that wasn’t the goal of the lobby after all. Since the rights of gay people are now upheld by law and custom, everything should be pretty much hunky-dory, but evidently not. Every action of the “gay rights” movement these days screams, not “give us our rights” but “Notice me!”

Well sorry, I’m not interested in your private life any more than I expect you’re interested in mine. That’s why it’s called “private.”

And by the way, Dumbledore is not gay. He’s not anything because he’s a fictional character.

P.S. Just because I’m a trivia freak, I’m going to mention that “dumbledore” is an old English word meaning “bumblebee.”

P.P.S. Yes, I have several gay friends. Some of them have told me that they value my friendship precisely because of my attitude.