Rowling is defenitely NOT pandering. This bit of storyline has been long in coming and there were those of us who suspected---past a certain point. As a lot of people here seem not to be familar with the books, I'll fill a bit of this in.
Dumbledore is a character filled with many charming eccentricities, but until Book 7 it was impossible to read anything into them as regards his character. In Book 6 two small details emerged that in retrospect mean a lot more...to some. In one flashback scene Dumbledore appears wearing a flashy plum-colored crushed velvet suit and his dark hair is elaborately dressed. In another chapter he expresses a fondness for knitting patterns. (Now some fans are also reading into his professed love of socks and his blushing in a scene from an earlier book where Professor MsGonagall compliments him on his earmuffs. Earmuffs?? OH BROTHER. Some suggest that Dumbledore is the "effeminate" type of gay man and there have been some amusing comments about the actor who plays Dumbledore, Micheal Gambon, possibly doing something crazy in light of this revelation about his character, like showing up on the set one day wearing a thong and flashy spangled boots---oh my. I wish!( HP6 is currently being filmed in Britain.)
In Book 7 however things take a turn. We find out many things that change Dumbledore's character for the worse; in the final book he emerges as a very complex character with a troubled past, from, it appears, a very troubled family, instead of just a kindly old man. Most mysterious of all is that when he was 17 Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with a brilliant 21-yr old fellow student named Gillert Grindlewald who dazzled him with Mein-Kampf like teachings about pure-bloods and power. Dumbledore probably didn't believe half of it, but he was in love and followed his teachings blindly. He would have done anything for Gillert. Mentors? Grindelwald was the mentor. But as it says the feelings weren't returned. There was all sorts of complicated stuff that ultimately involved the death of Dumbledore's sister and his later taking a trip around the world with another student, Eliphias Doge, who, it can be inferred, was more amenable to a relationship. Moreover, since he held himself responsible for his sister's untimely death, it could be argued that Dumbledore never apparently entering--so far as we know--any other lasting relationship, same--sex or not, was his way of doing penance for her death.
What's interesting about this is that some Harry Potter fans have suggested in recent discussions that in Jo Rowling's Wizarding World, the wizards are more tolerant of alternative lifestyles, conscious as they are of their own differences from Muggles, we ordinary folk, magic etc, esp living side by side with them. Well, that apparently isn't the case. Sometimes all too depressingly, Rowling has made her fictional world far too much like our own, even as it is different. This is a quality that many teen and adult fans of the BOOK series have come to love-and paradoxically, some critics of the MOVIES have increasingly come to hate. While readers can take comfort from the lessons to be drawn from people who are at once more and less real than ourselves, moviegoers, (critics reason) still prefer to be swept away in a totally escapist fantasy. In matters like this, honestly, I don't know. It depends on the subject, I guess.
In Chapter 2 of Book 7, one of the principal villains of the series, the tabloid journalist Rita Skeeter (I explain all this for the benefit of people like Irvine who haven't even seen the films) announces that following Dumbledore's death in Book 6, she is doing a new biography of him. This character was evidently Jo's modeling after "revisionist historians" like Tina Brown with Lady Di, that sort of thing. Rita makes the subtle suggestion (in poisonously sweet language that would make you vomit, b/c we hear it on the news every day) that Dumbledore had a dark secret and he wasn't the saint he was cracked up to be and his relationship with Harry was "unhealthy, even sinister" and the reason Dumbledore died was that Harry rose up and finally killed him after years of secret sexual abuse. The pedophile thing. (Harry was a witness to Dumbledore's death.) When Harry reads this article, he feels almost physically ill--though Rowling never says specifically what at. The "pedophile" accusations, or the rest? But the fact that at 16 Harry understands all this suggests Jo is far more mature about what to expose children to than many adults in the Muggle world appear to be. I get the feeling that if Harry was still 12 she'd have let him read the article too.
Of course, all this is suggested in the "coded language" we have all come to recognize on the subject. And we hate Rita even more b/c the information she forced out of her unwilling interviewee (via a spell) was essesinally correct. But not in the motives.
FYI, there's another reason the fundamentalist Christian wingnuts are hitting the ceiling. Rita Skeeter makes another innocous coded "suggestion" in that same chapter of Book 7: that Albus Dumbledore's brother, Aberforth, was tried and found guilty for the crime of bestiality--specifically with goats. In Book 5, in the Hog's Head Inn, Harry and friends briefly meet Aberforth, though they don't know it's him until 2 yrs later in Book 7, where he finally plays a important plot role at the end. (amusingly, in light of all this new revelation, in the Movie of Book 5, we briefly see him--and a goat. Would they have put this in NOW?
The actual phrase Jo, through Rita, uses is something like "experimenting with goats" so you really can't tell from reading the book if she means bestiality. For all we know, it could have been that using animals to test new and experiemental magical spells on (similar to the way we use mice and monkeys in laboratories) was illegal in the wizarding world, and that's what he was banished and made an outcast for. That's what thought it meant.
However, between all the dark secrets about Dumbledore's family, and this latest speaking event with Jo, I can't be sure. The evangelicals are also hitting the ceiling because, besides the reply Jo gave to the fan who asked the question about Dumbledore ever falling in love, "(answer: "Well, I've always thought Dumbledore was gay, and that he was in love with Gillert Grindelwald"--cheers from the audience, then she said, "well, if I had known it would make you so happy, I'd have told you earlier!" I don't know about that, she knows Americans too well) Another fan asked her specifically what Aberforth was banished for. What did she mean with the goats.
To this Jo shut right up and gave absolutely no answer. She just asked for the next question. Which she usually never does--she always gives some kind of answer, even if it involved a plot secret from a later book, she'd always give at least a clue. The fact that Jo refused to address this question has led many to believe that Dumbldore's brother did commit bestiality. If so, THAT is quite shocking stuff for a kid's book. Things like this actually become more believable in light of things like Rowling's dark backstory about Dumbledore and Aberforth's younger sister, Ariana, whom Jo in not so coded language this time inferred was gang-raped by three young men at the age of 9 and she was damaged for life, physically and otherwise, by this and her complications from this also led to her death. Their father avenged this brutal act by going after the three men, killing them, and he later died in prison.
Charming family history. But you pity Dumbledore even more now.
Then on top of all this you now will have people reading things into Chapter 37, "King's Cross", a strange chapter where Harry has an out-of-body experience wherehe wakes up naked, hears a thumping noises, thinks he is hearing something "shameful", wishes for robes, instantly puts them on, and then who should walk in but Dumbledore and they have a long conversation. I can't get into what they say or what the thumping noise is b/c it involves the plot of the whole series, this is a key chapter----again this is for people like Irvine--Sick-minded puritanical types will read into this and say that this is a masturbation scene and that Harry secretly harbored feelings for Dumbledore all along and he was bi, he loved Dumbledore before Ginny or anyone else.
To which people like you, Irvine, would say, "SO WHAT?" and I agree, but we're talking about sexuality issues in kid's lit and the reason that the fundies are up in arms is that all this stuff just exploded in Book 7 almost out of nowhere, though if we go back through the books now we see she has dropped clues here and there. And sometimes it's off the mark, people DO read too much into it. Still, Jo did not prepare people for this, so even people who are open-minded or try to be like me it IS a bit of a shock! It will just take getting used to, that's all!
And regarding kid's lit--Disney has sanitized everything, but my God, if you go back and read the origional Andersen and Grimm's Tales, it would have had Freud crying in his beer. Wow! Talk about more stuff you can read into than the drop of a hat!!!!
Oh..I may as well suggest one more sexual metaphor in Harry Potter 7 that I'm shocked so few fans have picked upon. When Lily Evans, Harry's future mother, meets Snape for the first time. It's on a playground, 9-yr old Lily and her sister Petunia are playing in front of a large rosebush. She picks a rose, and calls to Petunia, "Look, see what I can do!" She uses magic to make the petals of the rose she is holding in her palm open and close, open and close. ( She is just learning that she has magical powers--Petunia does not.) She is still doing this, looking down at the flower, when out jumps 9-yr-old Severus Snape from the bush, where he has been hiding, "greedily" watching her. (Now, if this isn't a "vagina" metaphor"....in light of the fact that soon after, Snape teaches her about magic, he already has a crush on her, and later fallsin love with her....)
. Kids don't get nearly enough credit regarding their ability to handle things.
This doesn't even make sense. 
Yes, sometimes adults in authority positions do violate that trust, but you can't go through life assuming the worst about authority figures based merely on their gender, sexual orientation, race, whatever.
