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It's official: Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie are not gay ... or straight
Sesame Street's Muppet couple Bert and Ernie are not gay.
But, according to Sesame Workshop, the organisation behind the popular U.S. television programme - it's also official that they're not straight.
Bert and Ernie are simply "best friends."
Please see our most recent statement regarding Bert and Ernie below. pic.twitter.com/gWTF2k1y83
— Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) September 18, 2018
The final ruling from Sesame Workshop - in an attempt to draw a line under a debate that has rumbled on since the pair first appeared on television in 1969 - is that puppets "do not have a sexual orientation".
"They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves," Sesame Workshop said on Twitter on Tuesday.
"Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation."
Sesame Workshop issued the statement in response to former show writer Mark Saltzman's claim last week that he wrote the pair's scenes as if they were a "loving couple".
"I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked “are Bert & Ernie lovers?” And that, coming from a preschooler was fun. And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them," Saltzman told Queerty in an interview published on September 16.
Bert and Ernie have long been gay icons, taking center stage in a legal dispute in Northern Ireland over a bakery's refusal to make a cake iced with the slogan "Support Gay Marriage" and a picture of the orange and yellow characters. — Reuters
