News

By Peter J. Smith

PORTLAND, Maine, October 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “What would Dumbledore do?” is the slogan of the popular Harry Potter fansite called the Harry Potter Alliance, which aims to turn fans into activists for a better world. However, the fansite is now directing tweens, teens, and young adults into a new kind of activism: pushing same-sex “marriage” and it has now set its sights on Maine.

The Alliance has scheduled October 24 in Portland as a day of training in door-to-door activism to urge Maine voters to reject Prop. 1, which would overturn the law legalizing same-sex “marriage” by way of a “people's veto.”  The event includes five hours of Potter-fans canvassing Maine voters with Maine Equality, a homosexual activist group. The event is called “Wrock 4 Equality” and begins and ends with concerts from the indie rock bands known as “Harry and the Potters” and “Draco and the Malfoys.”

The Massachusetts-based Alliance has also contracted with MassEquality to recruit its Potter fan base into Potter telephone activists, who will call up Maine voters asking them to vote “No” on the people's veto of the state's same-sex “marriage” law.

The Alliance intends to have its activist fans take part in a one-day House Cup Competition and register in one of the four Hogwarts Houses: Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Slytherin and Hufflepuff. The event employs a point-system – 5 points per call, 15 points for knocking on a door, and 20 points for speaking directly with an individual.

The effort also features Irish actress Evanna Lynch, 18, who plays the character Luna Lovegood in the Potter Films.

The Harry Potter Alliance is the brain-child of 29-year-old Andrew Slack. The site urges fan to interpret current events in light of the lessons of Harry Potter and sets up Potter's mentor, the wizard Albus Dumbledore, as a moral teacher. Interestingly, the author of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling, had stated in response to a question from a fan in October, 2007, that Dumbledore was homosexual.

Andrew Slack makes clear that the Alliance intends to be “Dumbledore's army in the real world” and the fight against the “Dark Arts in the real world” includes not only poverty, genocide, and disease – but traditional marriage as well.

For over the past nine months, Andrew Slack has used the star-power of Harry Potter to attempt to motivate Potter fans to lobby against ballot measures designed to preserve the traditional institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and the natural environment for the rearing of children.

The Alliance did not succeed in its efforts to overturn Prop 8 in California, but with the electorate so sharply divided in Maine, it tells its members that their involvement can have a decisive influence in that state.

In November, Maine voters will vote either “yes” or “no” on Prop. 1, which reads: “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?”

The latest poll results from the Portland-based Pan Atlantic SMS Group shows that 51.8 percent of voters would vote “no” on Prop. 1, while 42.9 percent would vote “yes”.  5.2 percent report they are “undecided.” The poll carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent.

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

Voter Referenda on Same-Sex “Marriage” on Nov. Ballot in Washington and Maine