Your reaction makes a lot of sense - it's really almost the same as *my* reaction to the idea of a canonically gay Lupin. I mean, he is consciously aware of the fact that his lycanthropy can be a danger to those around him - *including* the children he teaches - and to make lycanthropy an allegory of homosexuality seems dangerous. It's something that, in the Rowling-verse, people *catch* from lycanthropes, etc.

And, like you, I'd be upset by a canonically gay Pettigrew (and, at this point, a canonically gay Draco), for all the same reasons. I think it's dangerous in this social and political climate to portray a villianous or otherwise weak character as also being gay, especially if that character is the *only* gay character. Kids pick up more about society and social mores from literature than we give them credit for.

Umbridge....I would be equally upset if she were a lesbian....but there are other things about her and what befalls her that I wonder about the portrayal of. She's wicked, yes, downright morally blank (of all the evil characters we've encountered, even Bellatrix Lestrange does not exude the utter absence of morality that Umbridge does - she's a candidate for a serial killer profile). But what Hermione does to her, and what we can safely assume happened to her in the Forbidden Forest amongst the centaurs....is that justified?

Different thread, obviously.....