AP book man Hillel Italie went to J.K. Rowling's reading at Carnegie Hall Friday, and did he ever come back with a story: Albus Dumbledore was gay, Rowling told one young fan who wanted to know if the Hogwarts headmaster had ever found true love. Apparently Rita Skeeter missed the real scoop about the young Dumbledore's friendship with Grindelwald, as recounted in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have to confess that it slipped right by me, too, but then I had a hard time seeing anything past all the hamhanded parallels to Voldemort's reign of terror and the Third Reich, not to mention all the messianic imagery around Harry. How about you?

At least Rowling has a realistic view of how this is going to play out: After acknowledging that Christian fundamentalists aren't going to like this any better than all the witchcraft, she said, "Oh, my God... the fan fiction." While most of the world, or that segment of it willing to talk to reporters, views all this hoopla as a tremendous advance for human rights, there's also SFScope's uncelebratory editorial—"So what?"—and Pretty, Fizzy Paradise's unenthusiastic shrug—"what would have been admirable is to have it confirmed in the books." On the other hand, Italie spent the weekend looking for the corroborating Deathly Hallows passages, finding a bit of subtext in certain descriptions of Dumbledore's attitude towards his "best friend."