Rowling never fills us in on the private lives of the teachers (or Dumbledore for that matter) because those facts are rarely known to students.

I don’t believe she ever intended to announce that Dumbledore was gay. It was subtext that she didn’t want contradicted in the movies so she wrote a note and from there it was leaked.

At one point Rowling promised to fill us in on the question of whether any of the professors were married but that information never showed up in any of the books. There are hints that she might publish a lot of her back stories that didn’t make it into the books in some sort of book written for charity. I suspect there might be some surpises in there.

Then there’s the spooge-in-your-eye angle: You know that fictional character you’ve come to respect and admire? Total fag!
You know, sorta like claiming that James Dean, Carey Grant etc. are gay. That sort of thing.

Not to be confused with those that some wish were gay like Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Eddie Furlong, Daniel Radcliffe, Wil Wheaton etc.

One of the many commenters of JKR’s post publication announcement, felt that once the book is done, it belongs to the public, the author should no longer make statements. I tend to agree with that. If Dan feels that Dumbledore is gay, that is fine, though I doubt the JKR would see Dumbledore in the terms that Dan does.

As to your comment that it is interesting to have a world populated by wizards. To me, the fact that everyone was a wizard sort of diminished the meaning of Wizard. By the end I was feeling that only Dumbledore was a true wizard, Hermione and Harry had potential to become real wizards, but squandered it by simply becoming bureaucrats in the ministry.
What made Dumbledore great, was that he was one of those heroes you mentioned in your Beowulf post, a man who makes hard choices in life, makes a real decision to face and fight evil – even at the expense of his own personal happiness. I guess JKR feels that after vanquishing Voldemort there is no more evil in the world, so Harry and Hermione can simply be bureaucrats, but then she is missing out on history, we never vanquish evil, we overcome it for a while, until it rises again and a new generation must fight the battle again.

I have to wonder who really cares?

When I was reading about Dumbledore’s youth it made me think of how Rowling showed Harry’s father and his friends fairly as young men who weren’t always kind or noble, but who grew up and were real. Dumbledore’s selfishness and the pain it led to were something he carried with him but none-the-less his life was full and rich and he’d gone on to be a real person who truly cared about others and had a host of close friends and companions. Like Snape, not defined by his past mistakes or his human failings.

I was disappointed when Rowlings said Dumbledore was gay and that he’d been in love with whatever-his-name-was. Firstly, because I think fiction (and television) often doesn’t allow for non-sexual closeness and loyalty. I think this is bad because we lose examples and role models of platonic love and friendship. (I made this charge and someone came back with “Frodo and Sam!” as proof I was wrong… so when was tLotR written? Hm?) But it bothers me, too, that changing Albus’s loss to a romantic loss, seems to diminish the fullness of this life. Sure, I wondered, “Where is Mrs. Dumbledore” but I figured whatever romances he’d had were part of the larger tapestry of friendships. And I suppose there’s no reason that this isn’t still true, except that it just *feels* like this is saying that youthful passion was his One True Love and he never loved again.

No one has ever challenged me to help make a character more at one with gay sensibilities. Thank God! I wouldn’t know what to do other than fall back on stereotypes and insights garnered from friends. I would be so paranoid about offending through ham-handedness that I would crumple under the weight of it all.