Fire the canon: Dumbledore’s gay

You've probably heard by now that 'Dumbledore is gay'. But is he, really? There certainly is some confusion, even in the press, about what Rowling said, and what it means. Take this conversation I had with K-- (different from K---, below):

K: Dumbledore is gay, in case you haven't heard.
Me: not exactly.
K: oh, CBC news ran the wrong story then.
Me: They sure did. Rowling said "she always thought of him as gay", but she never wrote it down.
K: http://cbs5.com/entertainment/entertainment_story_292223510.html
Me: If she said I always thought of Harry as a boot licker, it wouldn't make it so, exactly. I don't need to read the article.
K: She says it in the article that he is, not that she thought of him that way:"Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."
Me: There seems to be some misquoting somewhere by somebody:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2196020,00.html
"The author replied: 'My truthful answer to you...I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.' The audience reportedly fell silent - then erupted into prolonged applause." I think those were her exact words. Anyway, sematics, I know, I'm just saying.
K: right
Me: It makes an interesting point about what control an author actually has over her characters beyond what is in print. I would argue that she has very little. If it was important to her, she would have included it in the story. Otherwise it is just idle talk.

So, then, is Dumbledore gay? There are two issues here, one of semantics and one of canon. Regarding the first, the words that Rowling actually used were that "she always thought of him" as gay, rather than "he is". Later on in the speech Rowling goes on to describe Dumbledore's gay-ness, which mostly refutes the semantics argument, effectively saying that "he is" gay.

The second issue is of canon, which relates to what 'ideas' truly exist in a fictional world, and which are 'outside' them. In the case of books, the ideas written down in the texts themselves are canon, and fan fiction or websites are not. Events or ideas in movies based on books may be incorporated into canon. But are Rowlings extra-text words and ideas considered canon?

In the Metafilter comments on this topic, this is what 'Weebot' had to say:

"As for canon/not canon...um, I call intentional fallacy? Regardless of whether she intended Dumbledore to be gay or just said this as a whim, it's still information that's (mostly) extratextual. What she said will lead to a plausible interpretation, but it's not the absolute interpretation. I mean, if we actually gave authors absolute say over the interpretation of their works, we'd be saying that Fahrenheit 451 is not about censorship."

A rebuttal by absolom says,

"Weebot: I disagree. Whenever the author speaks from "on high" about the nature of the characters in his or her universe, it speaks directly to the canon.

Now, a reader can chose to disregard the canon, (And, IMHO, is encouraged to, especially on first readings) but when an author comes out and flat out says something, it is etched into the canon. Until death, he or she is the ultimate canonical source. Indeed, the source by which canon is defined almost."

In the end, then, there will be debate about who has ultimate authority over canon. Certainly the author gets heavy weighting (Rowling's ideas, after all, birthed all these characters). How many extratextual ideas are we willing to add to the canon? Do we grant that Rowling can continue to add further ideas about what she "always thought" of the characters?