(RNN) - The Sesame Workshop, which creates Sesame Street, tweeted out a response to a puppeteer who said Bert and Ernie were gay.
Mark Saltzman, who wrote for the children’s show “Sesame Street” for 15 years starting in 1984, said in an interview with the LGBT publication Queerty that he viewed Bert and Ernie as a couple, and modeled them after his relationship. Saltzman was with film editor Arnold Glassman until his death in 2003.
“Yeah. Because how else? That’s what I had in my life, a Bert and Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate? The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert. How could it not?” Saltzman said in the interview.
The Sesame Workshop tweeted a response, saying that because Bert and Ernie are puppets and have human characteristics, “the remain puppets and do not have a sexual orientation.”
Please see our statement below regarding Bert and Ernie. pic.twitter.com/6r2j0XrKYu
— Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) September 18, 2018
Back in 2011, Sesame Street producers also said that the pair did not have a sexual orientation in a statement on Facebook. In 1994, the former CEO of the Children’s Workshop said Bert and Ernie were best friends.
“They are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets.They don’t exist below the waist," Gary Knell said in The Independent.
Bert and Ernie, who are roommates, were created to show that people with different personalities and interests could be friends. They’ve been on the show since it began in 1969.
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