:smack: Of course. Sorry.
I didn’t see it that way - rather, I thought that Dumbledore turned to the light in spite of his love for Grindlewald - that is, he turned aside from the love of his life for moral reasons. Which doesn’t really diminish his character.
i just did a quick re scan of the chapters.
doge (that’s his name!) was to travel with dumbledore. mum dumbledore died, albus had to stay home with sis and bro. bro went to hogwarts. grindelwald was expelled from his school and visiting his aunt the historian.
dumbledore and grindelwald in 2 months time become very close. then sis. dies, grindelwald leaves immediatly after the incident. dumbledore is devastated by sis. death and grindelwald desertion.
he starts questioning everything he knows about himself, grindelwald, his views on the world.
we have quite a space of years between his sis. death and his becoming a teacher at hogwarts. learning, making discoveries, meeting many different types of beings, i reckon.
the impression of dumbledore’s reaction to grindelwald is blind infactuation, bedazzled, rather lovestruck. whether it got physical is very vague.
rowling did state in the q and a that dumbledore did fall for grindelwald.
I don’t see the big fuss here. I see it as equivalent to a drector’s commentary on a DVD. I tend to avoid them because the director will say something like “I lit this shot to show how X character is conflicted and actually considers killing his mother” while I am thinking that I never saw that in the movie. Basically, you are free to read the books and interpret them as is. or if you wish to listen to what the author says about her feelings about the characters she created.
FWIW, I always saw something something more than just friendship in the Dumbledore/Grindlewald relationship; at the very least some hero worship.
And to be fair to JKR, she did finish the damn story, and not keep writing book after book after book after overblown book…
And she finished it before she died.
Reading between the lines of JKR’s interview, yes. 
Excerpt from the interview :
Q: In the Goblet of Fire Dumbledore said his brother was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms [JKR buries her head, to laughter] on a goat; what were the inappropriate charms he was practicing on that goat?
JKR: How old are you?
Eight.
JKR: I think that he was trying to make a goat that was easy to keep clean [laughter], curly horns. That’s a joke that works on a couple of levels. I really like Aberforth and his goats. But you know Aberforth having this strange fondness for goats if you’ve read book seven, came in really useful to Harry, later on, because a goat, a stag, you know. If you’re a stupid Death Eater, what’s the difference. So, that is my answer to YOU
I’m OK with Dumbledore being gay; there are certainly enough hints dropped in Deathly Hallows that it’s not a totally off-the-wall concept. Had Rowling said nothing more about it than what appears in the book, I would’ve simply assumed that the young AD and GG were just really close friends who eventually had a tragic falling-out.
The question she was asked at Carnegie Hall led naturally to the answer she gave, and yes, she made a splash, which I’m sure neither displeased nor surprised her. That’s fine. I just wish she’d been specific about AD’s sexual orientation in any of the seven books about the series; it does seem like a significant-enough aspect of his life story and character that it ought to have been in there somewhere. Among other things, the HP books are about tolerance, diversity and accepting those who are different. To have specifically written that the saintly, highly regarded, ne plus ultra wizard Dumbledore was gay would have sent an important message (“I’m here, I’m queer, and I rule Hogwarts, dammit” 
).
An author may say whatever she wants about her own work, but it’s not binding upon any reader who chooses to disregard it. Dumbledore is Rowling’s character and she can say whatever she wants to about him; good on her. And within reason, I’d give great credence to anything she said about the Potterverse. But my own view is that if it’s not in the books, it’s not “HP Canon.” Rowling could certainly make AD’s gayness canon in an HP encyclopedia or concordance - and I hope she will, someday soon.
This is near to the point I was making in the thread that the mods closed. Talking about a character as if the person actually exists is wacky. I understand that authors make up characters and have feelings for them, beliefs about them, etc. But to contend that a character is homosexual is to reveal something about his urges or his behaviors that only you and he know, because it is NOT in the book. Throughout the history of literature study, folks have speculated on the inner workings of the minds and hearts of characters. That’s one thing that gives those people something to do. But the fun of that is that no one KNOWS these things because they are fictional characters.
I think it would be much easier to have heard Rowling say, “I tend to think of Dumbledore as homosexual.” That might help readers understand certain character traits and actions. But to assert something about his sexual orientation is to suggest that he exists. And although characters can certainly seem real, particularly to an author, I suppose, they are not.
It’s also endemic to HP fandom. 
All I know is, I’ll never see those Potter Puppet Pals videos the same way again.
This is such a weird thread.
So, are you saying that one should never talk about a fictional character in a definite matter? Is it “wacky” to say, “Dumbledore is a wizard?” Is it better to say, “I think of Dumbledore as a wizard,” because he’s not real, and therefore not really a wizard? And how does the phrasing differentiate between a real character and a fictional character? I can say, “OJ Simpson is a murderer,” or I can say, “I think of OJ Simpson as a murderer,” and the only difference between the two statements is that the latter makes me sound wishy-washy. Neither statement imples anything, as near as I can tell, about the actual existence of OJ Simpson. Similarly, I don’t see any particular difference between, “Dumbledore is gay,” and “I think of Dumbledore as gay,” nor any reason why one way of stating exactly the same idea should imply that the speaker has a less than firm grasp on reality.
Right…we regularly talk about fictional characters all the time without the “I think” qualifier.
Harry Potter is a wizard.
Mr. Darcy is in love with Elizabeth Bennett.
Captain Ahab wants to kill Moby Dick.
and it’s understood we’re prefacing these statements with “In Harry Potter…” or “In Pride and Prejudice…” or “In Moby Dick…”.
Let me try it like this: what, exactly, leads the author to say that about the character? Is it something she saw him do? Something he said to her? What makes a character gay? I’m guessing it’s either behavior or expressed wishes or desires. But that didn’t happen, unless he whispered something to her while the rest of us were elsewhere. He’s not real. He doesn’t have ACTUAL thoughts. He’s not a Republican, for example. He IS a wizard, because that’s his behavior in the novel. If she says he’s gay, it’s because she thinks of him that way. Yes, it’s pretty much the same as saying he is, but there’s a distinction. One way makes her sound like a rational writer, involved in her works and her characters. The other makes her sound as if she believes the characters exist and have lives of their own. To me, that’s wacky.
Given that his homosexualiyt has been hidden for lo, these many years, I’d say there’s a good chance that he IS a Republican!
Yes, but in each of those cases the assertion is supported by the text. It’s speculating on them outside of the text that’s bizarre.
I think of Harry Potter as a briefs kind of guy, rather than boxers.
Elizabeth Bennet moved to Spain in her 60s and took up flamenco guitar.
Captain Ahab would have voted for Ron Paul if he were alive today.
Thank you.
No, no…Voldemort was a Republican. I understand that he eventually became the vice-president of the United States…
But the notion that Dumbledore was infatuated with GG is in the text. Even if the author never opened her mouth on the issue, the notion that this was both a romantic and intellectual infatuation was certainly something that was not only possible but probable (I certainly thought so at the time of reading it).
Put it this way: if GG was a young woman at the time, rather than a young man, would it come as some huge surprise and a totally unexpected departure if it was “revealed” that DD’s passionate attachment to her was in fact intended by the authour to be partly romantic?
To me, this falls in the category of further eludicating motivations already present in the text, rather than making up stuff not there at all.
A few things:
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Apparently JKR planned out the characters’ background far more thoroughly than she put in the books. For example, she thought of several of the characters as being black, but did not mention it in the books. When white actors were almost hired for the movies, she made it clear they needed to be black, and then revised the books so that this would be clear in future editions. While not necessarily going into that much detail, I would say most authors think about their characters’ backgrounds, so as to have a coherent idea of their characters’ motivations and so forth, and so that different bits of description don’t contradict one another.
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This leads us neatly to the next point, which is that it is very problematic to say that being gay is somehow extra information. In fact, what this means is that the character has been assumed up till now to be heterosexual, much as other characters are assumed to be white.
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Finally, JKR said that she wrote the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald the way she did because she thought of Dumbledore as gay. ETA: Malthus said this better than I did.