I'll be one of the first to admit it...I am a fanficer. I actually read a fic once where McGonagall and Trelawny were an item...was actually a decent fic. I've always thought McGonagall had lesbian potential...she gets my top vote. Second among the staff would have to be Hooch...as you already pointed out. Among the students...Lavender and Pavrati were awfully close "friends".

"Nothing is impossible and there is no such thing as a lost cause"

If I were to pick anyone it would certainly be McGonagall. Of course I just love Maggie Smith so there is that...

(Some might think it a bit much to have the top Hogwarts witch and wizard be gay, but if you've ever worked in a dorm, you know that residential life staffs are full of us.)

Being an Assistant Director of Res Life, I can attest to that.

Lupin was just an experiment! 

Lisa

bellatrix lestrange, duh!

Here's what JKR said at her press conference this morning:

“I know that it was a positive thing that I said it for at least one person because one man came out at Carnegie Hall.”

And, yeah, McGonagall? Absolutely a lesbian.

First of all, Bellatrix is in love with the Voldemort. Sick as that is, it's a major point in Book 7.

I think you're right on with the Professor's - especially Hootch and McGonagall. They would have been my first guess (and often, they were). And any woman as into plants as Prof. Sprout, it should really have been tattooed across her forehead. Speaking of which, and perhaps ironically, the woman who plays Professor Sprout in the films, Miriam Margolyes, is a lesbian. Mistake? I think not.

I also think there are many students who have potential; peripheral characters who flit in and out. You just KNOW that being in an all girl's dorm on those lonely and cold British nights must have fueled SOME kind bed-hopping tendencies. Especially (as you've already alluded to) among Quidditch players. Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet? Totally.

My wife and I have attended several HP themed parties as the cross-house token lesbian couple (She's a Gryffindor and I'm a Ravenclaw). I think there is strong possibility in that notion as well. Especially among girls like Millicent Bulstrode, or Susan Bones - girls who are not at all regarded by male classmates (from what we know), or are even marked as undesired by boys (like Millicent). And with a past and family history like Susan's ... it's lesbian drama in the making.

Clearly I haven't thought about any of this at all.

According to this site (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-5011.html) one of the books in the picture is "The Well of Loneliness":

 Interesting.

Totally in agreeance with the McGonagall thing. Uhm, have to admit I'm pretty heavy into the Harry Potter femslash fandom...I've actually written quite a few Alicia/Katie's, some Katie/Leanne and a Narcissa/Lily drabble. They're on my Livejournal.

  I ship:

Katie/Alicia (and variations on the theme, i.e. Angelina/Alicia etc etc. I'm the co-moderator of the LJ community femitch, which is for Quidditch-based femslash fic and art...I probably shouldn't have admited that :P)

Katie/Leanne (the girl who was with her when she got the whole curse thing on her. That scene was so gay).

McGonagall/Hooch

Lily/Narcissa

Ginny/Gabrielle Delacour

and the occasional Ginny/Tonks to boot.

*twiddles thumbs* Yes. Not that I spend a lot of time in the HP fandom or anything.

 I'm more amused that Dumbledore is gay than anything, because I totally read into the subtext between him and Grindewald and was going around telling everyone that they were so gay after I read the book. No one believed me, because I have a tendency to read subtext into pain killer commercials (...I'm not even lying. That Panadol commercial with the girl getting the other girl coffee in the morning? So gay.) So now I feel vindicated on so many levels. I love the gayness in popular kid's fantasy now, though I do feel half gipped that she didn't explicitly state it. Tamora Pierce is awesome for that. I can't wait to see the look on my friend's face now...she went apeshit after Daja came out properly in the books...Tamora Pierce had been saying for years before it came out that she was gay (along with Rosethorn and Lark, who are just very subtexty), but we actually got a proper romance thing in the books which was awesome. My friend is very anti-gay so she wasn't happy, and her face when we brought up the book around her...I'm giggling just thinking about it. Absolutely can't wait to see her today and bring up Dumbledore. It's gonna be awesome. XD

 ...Not that I'm antagonistic or anything.

yeah, mcgonagall and hooch. and rosmerta. no one knows much about her so wouldn't that be rad. and hot ^^

omg, inbd

Yeaahhh i'd say the best bet is McGonagall. She seems very lesbianish. But pretty much all the professors in hogwarts have some potential to be gay seeing as how JK never really went into their personal lives (except snape.)

also Bellatrix can't have been a lesbian, she was married. Duh. And she was definately madly in-love with voldemort.

I hate to be lame here, but, though I was excited about the news that Dumbledore was gay, I don't really see what all the gay fuss is about. I guess it honestly didn't even really come up for me. I loved all of the pairings that Rowling created so much, that it seemed almost sacreligious to think of them any other way. That's just me, though.

Also, I think we're leaving out the fact that, though there were no explicit LGBT characters in the books, the series was based on a band of "outsiders". Like many classic stories, it could easily be related to many of the things that LGBT youth and adults have experienced in their lifetime, with having to hide, looking for a community, and suchlike.

So many of the Hogwarts teachers were unmarried/ not seen in an opposite-sex relationship so Rowling could have made almost any of them gay. I got the impression Lupin was single for a long time because he had to hide the fact he was a werewolf and it kept him from getting close to anyone. McGonagall definitely could've been a lesbian.

I did feel some of the relationships in the series felt forced (Ginny and Harry? More a ploy to get Harry to marry in to the Weasely clan  and get the dream family he always wanted)

Unfortunately, this early promise was frittered away when she and Lupin became an item. Alas. (But anyone who hooks up with a werewolf has to fall somewhere on the spectrum of queer!)

Nice Buffy reference. That made my day.

Oh my, that's the funniest post I've read in ages. Thanks for the laugh!

 I've always been of an opinion that in the HP series either Dumbledore and McGonagall are an item / romantically interested in each other or they both are gay. They've always seemed to be quite similar to me in their goals and purposes and that was something other than them both being teachers (like I said, it was either them being a couple or belonging to the GLBT league).

Not to mention they're most definitely my two favorite characters in the book. I don't have any particular opinion about Rowling outing Dumbledore but the only question I seem to have is why did she do it at all? HP has been all over the place for the last 10 years and she has received dozens of questions in different interviews/chats/etc about him being single and yet she outs him in October of 2007. I don't really see logic in that and I would really hate for it to be a marketing step since I have a soft spot for JKR and wouldn't want her to be one of those people who'd do or say anything to attract attention (or whatever).

The fact that Dumbledore is gay didn't make me love him more because he's already a favorite of mine but like I said, I find it weird and wouldn't want to think of it as a way to boost the popularity even more.

Rowling would have gotten more kudos from me had she said this from the very beginning, or at least two or three books into the series, rather than announcing this after the books are finished. "Oh, I have nothing to lose now and will probably gain even more sales by saying this...Dumbles is gay!"

However...that mini rant aside, I was hoping Tonks was gay but she just dashed that little dream of mine out the door(do have to agree though, hooking up with a werewolf is definitely queer). If I'd been writing the books, they'd have been centered around Hermione (anyone other than me notice that if it hadn't been for Hermione, Ron and Harry would have been up a creek without a paddle for the whole series?) and Hermione would have been the biggest lesbian on campus.

Anyway...I'm bucking for McGonagall. Somebody in that series HAD to be the token lesbian.

Every once and a while I stumble upon things in the Queer Universe that make me think, "Jesus...it would be such a Public Relations disaster if the breeders infiltrated and got a hold of this..."

This thread is one of those things. Not that I think we should inhibit ourselves, but it's amusing to think about the wild inflamatory extrapolation and mud-slinging that would occur, eh? "What IS it with those crazy dykes and thinking everyone is GAY!?" (Little did we they know we knew their sisters....)

>.> ...And of course, I say 'breeders' affectionately...  ;)