It’s official — what Bert and Ernie feel for each other is nothing but innocent puppet love.
The producers of “Sesame Street” delivered some bad news yesterday to legions of Muppet fans who’ve been convinced for years that Bert and Ernie are gay and who’ve been bombarding the Internet with speculation about a wedding.
But, it turns out, Muppets aren’t gay. They aren’t straight. They don’t do sex. Period.
“Bert and Ernie are best friends,” the producers said in a statement.
“Even though they are identified as male charac ters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets and do not have a sexual orientation.”
The very fact that the producers felt it necessary to educate their viewers about the non-sex lives of puppets demonstrates the extent of the mad online debate that captivated bloggers who had nothing better to worry about while Wall Street was going crazy.
“I honestly can’t think of a more fun or more simple way to teach my kid about same-sex marriage. I’m not even gay and I support it,” wrote a Facebook poster named Leah Dehler.
An online petition asked that the puppets be allowed to tie the knot with no strings.
“It can be done in a tasteful way,” said the petition, which was signed by nearly 6,000 people. “Let us teach tolerance of those that are different.”
On the other side of the great debate was Facebook poster Chris Gregoire, who wrote, “If you want to introduce a new pair of gay characters, go ahead. Don’t say that just because two guys live together, they MUST be gay and they MUST get married. That’s pretty close-minded, too.”