Bert And Ernie Sexual Orientation Controversy — Sesame Street Muppets Bert and Ernie posing together with Bert's arm around Ernie

Bert And Ernie Sexual Orientation Controversy

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Published August 16, 2026

The Bert and Ernie sexual orientation controversy is a long-running online debate over whether the two Sesame Street Muppet roommates are a gay couple. It hit the mainstream with a 2013 New Yorker cover of the pair watching DOMA fall and blew up again in 2018 when a former show writer said he had written them as gay based on his own relationship.

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Overview

The Bert and Ernie sexual orientation controversy is the recurring public argument over whether the two male Sesame Street Muppets who share a bedroom at 123 Sesame Street are actually a gay couple1. Fans have speculated about the pair since the show began, since Bert and Ernie were written as adult roommates with a close bickering-couple dynamic even though they slept in separate beds1.

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Sesame Workshop pushed back every time the question came up. The most-quoted line came from then-Workshop head Gary Knell, who said in the 1990s that Bert and Ernie "are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets" and "do not exist below the waist"2. That answer satisfied almost no one, and every new pop-culture moment involving the pair kicked off the same fight online2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Sesame Street (source) / Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2013

Bert and Ernie debuted in July 1969 on the pilot episode of Sesame Street, and puppeteers Frank Oz and Jim Henson said the odd-couple friendship was modeled on their own friendship with each other4. Even so, plenty of viewers read the two as a queer-coded couple from the start, pointing to the shared apartment and the way they treated each other4.

The debate first turned into a full news cycle in 2011, when a Change.org petition asked Sesame Workshop and PBS to let Bert and Ernie get married. Sesame Workshop replied on Facebook that the pair were best friends written to teach kids about difference, and that as puppets they "do not have a sexual orientation"2.

How It Spread

On June 27, 2013, The New Yorker ran a cover called "Moment of Joy" by artist Jack Hunter, showing Bert and Ernie snuggled on a couch watching the Supreme Court strike down the Defense of Marriage Act3. Hunter said he had originally posted the image unsolicited to a Tumblr, and it became one of the widely circulated visuals tied to the DOMA ruling3. Sesame Workshop declined to comment on the cover, and that silence itself got picked apart in the LGBTQ press2.

The controversy hit its loudest peak on September 16, 2018, when longtime Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman told the LGBTQ site Queerty he had always written Bert and Ernie as gay because they were based on his own relationship with film editor Arnold Glassman1. Saltzman said friends actually called him and Glassman "Bert and Ernie," and that Bert's pet peeves were lifted from Glassman's1. Two days later, the Sesame Workshop Twitter account posted a statement repeating that the puppets have no sexual orientation, then deleted the tweet after users piled on4.

On September 19, 2018, Frank Oz posted a thread pushing back on the reading, writing that he and Jim Henson never created the characters as gay and that Saltzman's experience was his own4. Saltzman then walked the interview back in The New York Times, saying he brought his life into his writing but was not claiming the puppets themselves are gay, and that a same-sex couple on Sesame Street should be done with human characters1.

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