Are Ernie and Bert gay?

Rumors have long circulated that Ernie and Bert are a gay couple as seen on Sesame Street. Sesame Workshop disavows these rumors and points out that Ernie and Bert are puppets, not humans; the Workshop's official position, therefore, is that Muppet characters Ernie and Bert are simply good friends. Advocates of this position note that Ernie and Bert's bedroom contains two single beds rather than one larger bed.

When Michael Davis, author of the 2008 book Street Gang, was asked, "What's the biggest misconception that people have about Sesame Street that you're hoping to dispel with this book?," Davis responded, "That Bert and Ernie are gay."

In 2002, Sesame Workshop lawyers blocked further showings of the short film Ernest & Bertram by Peter Sears, in which a character based on Ernie confesses his romantic attraction to another character based on Bert.

Rumor Sources
"Bert and Ernie conduct themselves in the same loving, discreet way that millions of gay men, women and hand puppets do. They do their jobs well and live a splendidly settled life together in an impeccably decorated cabinet."


 * - The Real Thing by Kurt Andersen, 1980

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"Bert and Ernie are two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom. They share clothes, eat and cook together and have blatantly effeminate characteristics. In one show Bert teaches Ernie how to sew. In another they tend plants together. If this isn't meant to represent a homosexual union, I can't imagine what it's supposed to represent."


 * - Rev. Joseph Chambers, 1994 radio show in attempt to get the characters banned

Official Statements
"Bert and Ernie, who've been on Sesame Street for 25 years, do not portray a gay couple, and there are no plans for them to do so in the future. They are puppets, not humans. Like all the Muppets created for Sesame Street, they were designed to help educate preschoolers. Bert and Ernie are characters who help demonstrate to children that despite their differences, they can be good friends."


 * - Sesame Workshop's consumer response prepared statement, 1993.

"'They are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets,' says Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell. 'They don't exist below the waist.'"


 * - Sesame Street: A Celebration - 40 Years of Life on the Street, p. 47.

Other Quotes

 * "They're puppets. They don't exist below the waist!"
 * - Steve Whitmire to students in a Q&A session at Carnegie Mellon University, September 10, 1997


 * "All that stuff about me and Bert? It's not true. We're both very happy, but we're not gay."
 * - Ernie to students at Carnegie Mellon University, 1997


 * "Oh, you had to ask that question. No, no. In fact, sometimes we are not even friends; he can be a pain in the neck."
 * - Bert to Spencer Howson when asked if he and Ernie are "more than just good friends" in an ABC Brisbane radio interview, March 7, 2005. ([[Media:Spencer Howson ABC Australia with Eric Jacobson and Bert 20050307.ogg|sound bite]])

Analysis
Ernie and Bert are owned by Sesame Workshop; therefore, the workshop's assertion that the characters are not gay is a logically sufficient answer to the question "Are Ernie and Bert Gay?" This section takes the workshop's assertion as given but examines two of the arguments commonly used to support this assertion.

"Ernie and Bert are puppets"
Ernie and Bert are Sesame Street characters who originated as puppets. However, puppets are representational objects, and within the realm of Sesame Workshop Muppets, puppets are used to represent and illustrate a wide range of species, races, emotions, and even medical conditions. Furthermore, at least one Sesame Street Muppet, Count von Count, is portrayed as having an active love life, and Bert himself has sung about his girlfriend, as well as having had a crush on Connie Stevens. There are also several families on Sesame Street that have produced children, including Humphrey, Ingrid and Baby Natasha, and Elmo and his father and mother.

On The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy is also well known for her romantic entanglements with Kermit the Frog and various male guest stars. Thus, two puppets could, in principle, represent a gay couple. That Ernie and Bert do not is the choice and position of Sesame Workshop.

"They don't exist below the waist"
As mentioned above, Ernie and Bert are characters that originated as puppets. The puppets traditionally used to represent these characters do not, in fact, exist below the waist. However, the characters also exist as full-bodied puppets in Sesame Street Live and at Sesame Place. Furthermore, the characters exist as full-bodied entities in books, in animated segments, in the form of toys, and in the imaginations of children and adults alike. Therefore, that Ernie and Bert do not exist below the waist is not strictly true.

This assertion also implies that homosexuality is only a sexual behavior that takes place "below the waist", ignoring the romantic and self-identity elements of sexuality. Gay people experience love as well as "below the waist" action, and that love could be expressed between two puppets as in the examples above.

Parody and References

 * Family Guy
 * American Dad
 * Avenue Q
 * Bernie und Ert
 * Ernest & Bertram
 * Daryl Cagle's 2003 editorial cartoon on gay marriage
 * Glee, Supernatural, The Colbert Report, Greg the Bunny, and The Cleveland Show have made minor references.