It’s Official: Sesame Street’s Bert And Ernie Are A Gay Couple

It looks like pop culture fans finally have some confirmation about what they've been suspecting the past few decades – Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie are actually a couple.

Queerty just recently spoke with Sesame Street scriptwriter Mark Saltzman about his tenure on the iconic educational children's television series and during his interview with the publication, the writer admitted that he had actually projected bits of his own relationship with his partner Arnold Glassman on to the relationship of Bert and Ernie.

The writer who brought Placido Flamingo to the series wrote more than 50 songs for Sesame Street, and Saltzman had written so many parts for Bert and Ernie. When asked whether he thought that Bert and Ernie as a "gay couple" while working in Sesame Street's writer's room, Saltzman acknowledged that he actually had intended for the two to be lovers in the show.

"I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked, "are Bert & Ernie lovers?" And that, coming from a preschooler was fun," Saltzman recalled. "And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were."

According to the writer, he didn't really have any other way to contextualize the characters, especially since he and his partner were often referred to themselves as "Bert and Ernie." The Sesame Street characters also became an analogy for his relationship with Glassman, because the experiences he had with his partner would permeate onto the page.

This is definitely big news for pop culture fans. Audiences have long since wondered what kind of relationship Bert had with Ernie, and their status as roommates has often been scrutinized by those following the series. Now, it looks like we finally know that Saltzman wrote the two as if they were lovers as well. Here's to another victory for the LGBTQ and for diversity.

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