Another Social Agenda?

J.K. Rowling, author of the best selling Harry Potter series, has hit her eager readership with a post-publication bombshell. Rowling announced that Dumbledore, headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, is gay.

Responding to a question about the apparent lack of normal romance in Dumbledore’s life, Rowling shocked her Carnegie Hall admirers by flatly stating, “Dumbledore is gay,” adding that his attraction was toward a bitter enemy in a previous wizard war.

Some are shocked, and others are enthused, with readers divided along the lines of their previous moral convictions. The books are part of fantasyland, but millions of young readers likely have trouble sorting fact from fiction.

On her U.S. book tour, Rowlings stated that she sees her books as a “prolonged argument for tolerance” and has urged her fans to “question authority.”

So now we know. The Harry Potter books really have a social moral agenda that is far wide of traditional Biblical truth. Parents should reevaluate their approval of their kids’ reading and pay more attention to the cautionary voices. Rowling’s gay character announcement coming just before Halloween should give us all pause to review the entire field of occult supernaturalism.

God’s Word says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret” (Ephesians 5:11 & 12). Witchcraft is roundly condemned in Scripture (Exodus 22:18; Deuteronomy 18:10; II Chronicles 33:6; Malachi 3:5; Galatians 5:19-21). Now, with one of the fictional characters in the popular, record-setting Potter series being announced to be homosexually inclined, it’s a worse perversion.

A story my 6th grade teacher told is vital in this case. She said, “A man was found to have stolen an old, rotten rope from a farm. He was caught, tried and imprisoned for his crime.” And then she waited for the obvious comment from a student. “Teacher, wasn’t that a harsh punishment for so minor a crime?” “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she replied, “that tied at the end of the rope was a valuable race horse.”

In the case of Harry Potter and so much other literature that shows a moral agenda, we must ask ourselves, “What’s tied to end of the rope?”

David Virkler