I think the misconception here is that people consider them to be puppets that represent full human beings. I don’t think they are, they are just themselves. They are exactly as sexual as they act, which is not at all.
That’s what I said! Sort of.
I never thought of them as adults, come to think of it. I always thought they were kids, and brothers.
As soon as they officially get Bert and Ernie together, all the tension will go out of their relationship, and then the slash fic is going to suck. Mark my words. 
I think the idea of a same sex couple living on Sesame Street is a great one.
No, not the same people ultimately. The point of intersection between the Muppets (as in the Muppet Show & movies) and Sesame Street is Kermit, but while he fits in both, ah, universes, the sensibility of the two enterprises is quite different.
No, until recently there was a lot of overlap between the Muppet Show Muppets and the Sesame Street Muppets.
For one specific example Ernie was performed by Jim Henson until his death, and Bert by Frank Oz until 1997. Both Henson and Oz did multiple other characters on both shows and various other Muppets productions. (As well as non-Muppet productions Henson studios worked on.) Their replacements, Steve Whitmire and Eric Jacobson, both also do multiple characters in both branches of the Muppet family (and have done characters in other branches). Expanding out, Jerry Nelson is the original primary muppeteer for Snuffy, Floyd Pepper, Gobo Fraggle, and others.
Jim Henson Productions wasn’t just a puppet building shop, they were a stable of performers, as well. Even now that Disney owns the Muppets brand (and licenses it to CTW for Sesame Street, but not to anyone else - so current airings and videos of Fraggle Rock have the Muppets name removed, for instance), there’s significant overlap in the Muppeteers. (I’m pretty sure a bunch of them are involved in some current (thus non-Muppet) Henson productions, too.)
Kinda like “Puppet Contract Players”, huh, Tengu?
Won’t be long before they strike, I bet! 
Q
Being fabulous?
spark240 “insufficient” in what way? Honestly, it would seem somewhat incestual.
I think people just want them to get married to a.) piss off the homophobes and b.) a political stunt. While I support fully having a gay couple on Sesame Street, I don’t think it should be Bert and Ernie, because I think it would feel like a gimic.
You may be on to something.
Also, you’re needed in this thread on Rasputin
Suppose it was officially announced that Bert & Ernie were in fact a couple, and would be portrayed as married. Maybe they have a show or two that directly talk about that, and depict a ceremony. Their friends are happy for them.
Then what? Within the frame of the show, what would change? Given that they are completely non-sexual characters, and have been BFFs and roommates forever anyway, what would they do as a “gay couple” that they’re not doing already?
I don’t think it would make any difference at all.
There’s nothing in the show that contradicts them being a couple, just as there’s nothing that confirms it. (Try it at home. Set aside your background with the show, approach it fresh, and when B&E come on camera, tell yourself “they’re a gay couple.” It works just fine. It works equally well if you tell yourself they’re not.)
It doesn’t bother me at any level if people want to think of B&E that way, but having them “get married” at this point would be out of the blue. They’ve been BFFs and roommates forever; they’ve always been a couple, if one wants them to be; why would they or the show suddenly need to say anything about their relationship?
I’m talking about the human creators, who were the ones commenting on the lack of Muppet sexuality (**Tengu **covered the layers of creator intersection nicely)
It’ll raise more questions for all of us, young or old. We’ll all be back there watching old episodes to figure out what realities escaped us. 
I’ve never thought of Bert and Ernie as gay, and I think they do show a great, loving, caring friendship.
Adopt Elmo.
I like their relationship as friends. And as roommates. They have a good strong friendship.
As a “to death do us part” marriage, it really seems rather dysfunctional. Not really a marriage I’d want to have modeled where Bert is the “grownup” with grownup interests and Ernie is permitted to be an eternal child.
This is a perfectly acceptable roommate situation to have when you are in college or a young adult (and in the real world, most people eventually grow up). You don’t marry someone when that dynamic exists - wait and see if the growing up happens. (I speak from experience…I was Bert married to Ernie).
As I recall, in the seventies they both had their signature songs about objects of their affection.
I know that CTW adamantly denies it, but I think there may be a tiny bit of subtext there.
And the Bert and Ernie that my daughter watches have ventured a little further out of the closet. (Video link.)
Now that’s a facile and intellectually dishonest argument. A closer analogy would be left-handed people. This variation has a similar distribution and shares the attribute of having been arbitrarily singled out as a moral failure in want of correction by some of the same groups which continue to have their backs up about homosexuality.
My father was born left-handed and had it “corrected” by nuns at school, with a stick. My older brother inherited the gene that codes for left-handedness, and with it the legacy of corrective smacks - this time from my father, who accepted that it was necessary to be right-handed and “normal,” even if he was a clumsy and accident-prone “right-hander.”
I had the good fortune to be born right-handed, and so my childhood differed from my brother’s in that I wasn’t constantly hit by my father. I don’t know for sure, but I think there’s a good chance that this had something to do with me turning out relatively okay, while my brother was always in trouble and O.D.'d before he made it out of his twenties. The outcome of this genetic lottery still seems tragically unfair to me, and I’m glad that most people have let go of the superstitious notion that there is something wicked and unnatural about people with left-handedness, because these sorts of medieval beliefs have effects on real people with no choice in the matter.
The characteristic of handedness is of course fairly trivial when compared with the characteristic of sexual preference. I think most of us would vastly prefer to get by using the wrong hand for us than be compelled through an arbitrary declaration of “normal” to couple with someone that’s the wrong gender, live alone, or face ignorance and intolerance all their lives.
Of course some people will object to the notion that homosexual couples are normal, because it’s at odds with their system of morality. However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to take the position that any system of morality that excludes and pathologizes such a large portion of the population on the basis of something as fundamental as the way they were born is deeply flawed and overdue for amendment.
Larry, I don’t find your analogy any less problematic. I accept your premise of the genetic lottery, but would you accept that during the run of the Sesame Street to date, there hasn’t been a point where left-handedness was looked down or reviled by a significant portion of the population? At least to the point where people would boycott a show, write angry letters, because of a left handed character on screen? I think that’s a reality you have to face in the current political climate.
Now, you may think that Sesame Street has a mandate–even a duty–to stand up to cultural bullies, and show the world for what it really is. To make it abundantly clear to young children that a gay couple is as normal and acceptable as a black person or someone who is left handed. But then say that! Is that problematic? It’s incorrect to say “Gays exist, ergo we must show them on Sesame Street,” because it’s a non-sequitur.
Huh, I never perceived Ernie or Bert as “child” muppets when I was a kid (in the mid-to-late 80’s, though I watched the show with my younger sibling up until the mid 90’s). Aside from characters like the news anchor, Bert and Ernie were near the top of my internal Muppet age hierarchy (along with Oscar), and clearly older than characters like Grover and Elmo.
Anyway, I like them better as an example of a very close, healthy friendship between men. But a new couple of gay parents on the show would be fantastic.
I might not use those exact words, but demonstrating diversity and to the Children Television Workshop’s mandate from day one. We may not blink at a multiracial cast now, but in 1969 it was still pretty cutting edge. In 1970, the state of Mississippi banned it on the grounds that its integration was offensive.
Left-handedness has never been much of an issue on Sesame Street, because by the time it came around, handedness was already largely considered to be the non-issue that it ought to be. I have no doubt that if it were more of an issue, they would have been more inclined to touch on it.
I have several family members who would not allow their kids to watch Sesame Street because they speak Spanish on the show, and they felt it was encouraging illegal immigration or something, and also “This is America! We speak English!!”
So, the ability of assholes to be offended is virtually bottomless. I don’t think it’s a good reason to restrict content.
IMO making Bert and Ernie a couple is too drastic a retcon. But I’m curious, which would you prefer: human or Muppet same-sex couple?
That’s a really strong argument here in the USA. I hear stories that other places don’t have those issues, but certainly here in the US there’s a strange notion that platonic physical affection doesn’t exist.
I think rather than marrying them, or having any wedding at all, there should just be an already married human couple.