My Friend Just Came Out To Me – Now What??

Straight from Friendfactor's Burning Questions...

Don’t panic! If your friend is coming out to you, you’re a person to be trusted. They wouldn’t be telling you something this personal (and, in many cases, difficult)  if they didn’t believe you’d handle it like a good friend. So trust your friend’s instincts: you’re gonna do great!

Here’s a cheat sheet of Do’s and Don’ts for when your friend comes out:

The Do’s

Tip 1: There’s no one right way to respond. Trust your gut and what you know about how this friendship works – coming out never happens the same way twice, so handle it your way.

Tip 2: Figure out what your friend needs now. The particulars of the reasons and way your friend is coming out will dictate your response more than anything else. For example:

• A friend who’s excited to show off his new relationship wants you to be excited for him, so ask all about it and celebrate! But,
• A friend who comes to you upset because her parents aren’t supportive needs comfort more than anything. Let her know you’re still there for her, no matter what.

Your friend coming out is just like any other thing you go through together; gauge how you can best be there for them,  what they need, and how you can provide it.

Tip 3: Voice your support loud and clear. More than anything your friend probably just needs to know you guys are still cool. No matter what else is racing through your brain (and all of that is ok), let your friend know you want them to be happy and aren’t going anywhere.

The Don’ts

Tip 1: Don’t ignore the situation. Coming out is a hard thing to do, and glazing over what your friend has told you is a lousy way to acknowledge that. This may seem like a good idea because you’re totally cool with it and don’t think it’s a big deal, but it’s important to let your friend know you heard them and actively voice support.

Tip 2: Don’t laugh it off if your friend is being serious. Having a friend come out can be uncomfortable, and laughing through it is a pretty common way of handling awkward situations. Keep it in check: your friend has it harder than you do right now and is almost certainly more uncomfortable.

Tip 3: Don’t doubt. Your friend absolutely knows best in this case. It probably wasn’t easy coming to grips with who they are; don’t ask if they’re sure or tell them they’re just confused. Simply let them know you support them.

More crucial tips after the jump!

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Does it matter if Dumbledore is gay?

The first answer to this question is “not today, Dumbledore died two movies ago and you should be standing in line at the movie theater rather than putzing around on the internet.” Fair enough! But in honor of the premier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, we’re revisiting the (non)controversy that rocked the Potter-verse in October of 2007, and set the stage for the most fraught and compelling relationship in the venerable wizard’s life with best friend-cum-arch nemesis Gellert Grindelwald.

Facts first: J.K. Rowling “outed” Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore in one of the most nonchalant statements of its kind in our collective memory, at a stop at Carnegie Hall on her book tour:

“Dumbledore is gay,” she said, adding he was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, who he beat in a battle between good and bad wizards long ago.

Ellen lined up a whole magazine cover to say that! It’s not entirely fair to compare a fictional character’s coming out story against a real-world celebrity, but Dumbledore probably wins out in terms of international reach, Rowling’s career could have been hurt to the same extent as the comedienne’s, and the backlash was arguably no less severe. Still, in the ten years between the moments these two stepped out of the closet, the world had changed significantly. Consider the BBC’s report of the Carnegie Hall event:

The audience gasped, then applauded. “I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy,” she said.

“Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” she added, saying Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down” and his love for Grindelwald was his “great tragedy”.

And herein we arrive at the heart of our question: does it make a difference if the Headmaster wasn’t Hetero?

Not in many of the ways you might think. As Rowling’s response indicates, sexuality wasn’t a central part of Dumbledore’s character in the first six books of the Potter series; while she knew this intimate fact about her creation from the beginning, it never affected Dumbledore’s interaction with students at Hogwarts and simply didn’t merit mention in the world of the novels, which largely revolve around young Potter’s perspective. The revelation did nothing to besmirch the wizard’s image, and was essentially peripheral to his life as we, the readers, knew it. This is probably familiar territory for many of us who have experienced a friend coming out. It can be a lot to digest at first, but our friends are still the same people regardless of who they fall in love with.

But it did matter. It mattered a lot to some people. For many gay and transgender youth, there are precious few real  LGBT people to serve as mentors, which leaves only a handful of positive role models in popular media to look up to. The knowledge that the most powerful wizard in the known world — an unqualified good guy — is widely known to be gay sends a pretty strong message that you can do good in the world, whatever your sexuality. The uphill battle in California to have basic LGBT history taught in public schools has been a traumatic one, and those are real people who made significant contributions to society! Gay folks simply don’t get to see a lot of people like them in the  news, movies, and television watched by the general public. That visibility, and the casual acceptance of a gay character by a beloved author, was probably a breath of fresh air to many of our LGBT friends.

And as Rowling pointed out in that initial interview, it mattered to Dumbledore. We’ve all been there: making lousy decisions because we fancy a friend. The stakes were particularly high for young Albus, who was blinded to Gellert’s megalomaniacal aspirations by his crush, but the situation would have been identical had he been straight and befriended a powerful dark witch rather than Grindelwald. The people Albus Dumbledore loved deeply impacted his life, and loving this particular dude was a major part of that. Anybody’s understanding of the character would be incomplete without an understanding of the way his feelings were manipulated by his friend and romantic interest; if we never knew Dumbledore was gay, we might have missed the heart-breaking complexity of his relationship with Grindelwald.

Interestingly, Dumbledore is not the only one in the Hogwarts halls to have perhaps found a gay identity important: the actor playing the werewolf professor Remus Lupin believed the character to be gay until he married a witch, Tonks, in a later installment of the series. Again, this didn’t ever come up in the text of the Potter canon, but was revealed in a behind-the-scenes interview. Just another case of sexuality mattering mostly in the eye of the beholder, and not reflecting job-performance or moral fiber.

So as far as we’re concerned, Dumbledore can crush on whoever he wants and still be the greatest Wizard to ever sport half-moon spectacles. But it’s nice to know the truth — we all want to understand what motivates our friends.

Did Dumbledore’s revelation have an impact on you or your friends? Any thoughts on how this translates to your real-life friendships? Get the party started in the comments!