Harry Potter her publishers to adopt a more gender-neutral pen name in order to appeal to the male members of this age group, fearing that they would not be interested in reading a novel they knew to be written by a woman. She elected to use J. K. Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling), using her grandmother's name as her second name because she has no middle name. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was published by Bloomsbury, the publisher of all "Harry Potter" books in the United Kingdom, on 26 June 1997. It was released in the United States on 1 September 1998
Politics of Harry Potter head of Human Life International, an American-based Roman Catholic activist pro-life organisation, taking a negative view of the books and "their literary offspring", said that Harry Potter indoctrinates young souls in the language and mechanics of the occult and said that Rowling's portrayal of Dumbledore socialises if not indoctrinates young people into tolerance of gays. The "Berkeley Beacon" said that one parent's perception of indoctrination is another's education, in their article, "No Politics in Harry Potter", which countered charges that Rowling promoted homosexuality in her books. Discussing the controversy, Rowling told the BBC that "Christian fundamentalists were never my base"