Harry Potter author JK Rowling has announced that Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, in many ways the moral center of her wizarding universe, should be understood as gay. If only this had been revealed in the books!

Why, I’m wondering, did Rowling wait until now to reveal this? And will the crazies renew their attempts to ban the Potter books from children’s libraries?

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.