Dude, I agree, settle down. Yeah, it sounds a little silly in practice when all's said and done to be all "Oh yeah, btw, he's gay" and I think there should be more clues when a major character has an orientation. At least where Lexington was concerned. But that'd be kinda hard to do. "Man, is Thailog a hottie!" FTW.
In the case of Dumbledore, there were already ppl speculating that he was drawn to Grindy in something beyond a platonic manner. Besides the fact, these are characters in children's media. They aren't permitted to be all Queer Eye and shit. You'd think the most inoffensive queers ever would be
lovable penguins but that's not the case. Until we live in a more tolerant world, all of the gay children's cartoon and literary characters are gonna have to remain in the closet and come out Rock Hudson style, when they're already famous and dying of AIDS. Putting a blatantly gay character in a children's book is more suicidal than sticking in witchcraft where the book burners are concerned.