Does it matter if Bert and Ernie are gay?

After years of speculation (and countless jokes), Sesame Street went out of its way to make one thing perfectly clear this week: Bert and Ernie are just good friends. Yes, they’ve lived together for 40 years. They take the occasional bath together. They even share a bedroom. But rest assured, they do not share a bed. Despite what you may have heard, Bert and Ernie are not gay.

Sesame Workshop, the production team and nonprofit organization behind the show, released a statement on Tuesday to clarify that Bert and Ernie have many human traits but “remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

Make sure no one tells Kermit and Miss Piggy.

This statement comes after former Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman revealed in a Queerty interview that “I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were (a gay couple). I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them,” adding that he likened the pair to his own relationship. One was a little uptight, the other was a jokester. Hijinks ensued.

Sesame Workshop was quick to put the kibosh on that, as Frank Oz, who helped create Bert and Ernie with Jim Henson and other writers, was among the first to respond. “There’s much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness,” Oz tweeted.

Statements like this bolster a recurring message pelted at members of marginalized groups: your identity doesn’t really matter to the majority. But it clearly does matter. “It’s just a puppet” is the impulsive statement we hear when the sexuality of these characters is questioned. Meanwhile, no one ever seems to mind that a heterosexual relationship between two characters is the driving force behind the most beloved Muppets story arcs.

This subdued lack of comfort with homosexuality is also displayed in the lengths to which Oz and Sesame Workshop went to protect Bert and Ernie from gay rumours. The eagerness with which they reacted to Saltzman’s interview is an eye-opening exercise in how gay people continue to be perceived, as well as which fictional characters are allowed to have sexual orientations.

For example, no one seems to bat an eye when LGBTQ people claim the Babadook or IT’s Pennywise as one of their own. Issues only arise when wholesome, beloved characters are at stake, not literal monsters. That’s a dangerous association, especially when it comes to children’s programming.

Representation of LGBTQ people across popular culture, and children’s entertainment in particular, is sorely lacking. Sesame Street has a reputation for educating children on “the other.” They recently introduced a puppet with autism. They’ve also had a wheelchair-bound puppet and an HIV-positive one. It seems fair to assume that the children’s show was handed a golden opportunity when it came time to address Bert and Ernie in a progressive way.

Oz later asked on Twitter if the duo was, in fact, homosexual, would their interactions be different? Would their sexuality change their dynamic? Oz meant for this question to prove his point that it doesn’t matter, but if that’s the case, then why was everyone so quick on the draw to deny the idea that Bert and Ernie are gay?

LGBTQ people are made to subsist on breadcrumbs when it comes to visibility and representation — even while legal and physical protections are non-existent for us in some places of the world — could we not at least be thrown a bone here (even one made of felt)?

Sesame Street and Oz’s over-clarification hopefully won’t stop people from speculating whether Bert and Ernie are gay. The pair have long been used as gay icons in popular culture, even making the cover of the New Yorker in commemoration of the 2013 DOMA ruling. At this point, their sexuality — and whether they have one or not — should be out of their creators’ hands.

For a show whose theme song boasts a neighbourhood that is friendly enough for everyone to come and play, one would hope that on Sesame Street, being gay would also be a-OK.

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