Author J.K. Rowling had recently outed the wizard Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the Hogwarts academy in her Harry Potter books, during an appearance at Carnegie Hall. On being asked if Dumbledore had ever fallen in love, Rowling responded that she "always thought of Dumbledore as gay," adding that she had to reveal the detail to a scriptwriter for the sixth Harry Potter film.

"Just imagine the fan fiction now," Rowling quipped to the audience.

Dumbledore joined the ranks of characters such as the Teletubbies' Tinky Winky, who was outed in a 1999 National Liberty Journal article, attributed to pastor and lobbyist Jerry Falwell, who said that the purple, genderless character was acting as a Trojan horse for acceptance of gays by carrying a handbag and donning a triangle-shaped growth atop its head.

"Don't these professional Christians have something to do during the day?" Carlin thought out loud to Olbermann. "I mean, didn't Jesus leave instructions?"

"The reading of science fiction such as the Bible, you know, and giving it the standard of truth...it would be cartoonish if it weren't dangerous to some people."

Carlin passed away of heart failure on Sunday at the age of 71.

The clip below is from MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, part of an interview originally broadcast on October 23, 2007.