Official:Burt and Ernie are not gay

[The Original Bamfer]

Starting a petition to demand that the producers of Sesame Street "out," the puppets seems like an attempt to force the puppets to be gay to me. I think all parties involved need a good smack upside the head. The petitioners for having nothing better to do with their time than apply sexuality to puppets and the producers for addressing this with anything more than an eyeroll.

Well, yeah. I was talking more on a this-thread scale. But when people adopt characters and feel they need to represent their adult cause - especially when those characters are childrens' characters - that's wrong. But I have no issue with very subtly trying to encourage acceptance of people in our society that are still being ridiculed for no reason.

I have a cousin that's much younger than me - he just turned thirteen. By nature, he was always very sweet and sensitive and still is, but with divorced parents and peers at "that age" he's being pulled in all different directions in terms of who he thinks he should be. And he was never educated on what a gay person really was, let alone that they're people who should be accepted. And now he's easy to throw around the most insulting of homophobic slurs at the sight of what he believes might be a gay person. He has a skewed vision from his bigot father and the immature teens around him. Now had there been some very neutral, light and educational program like Sesame Street that incorporated something, again, very subtly, into the show, he might have had grown up with the knowledge that a boy loving a boy, or a girl loving a girl is not something shocking or disgusting. And that may have have stuck with him past what his ******* dad and the dumb kids at school tell him.

 

[Duke]

Batman and Robin have been accused of being gay since at least the 1950's. That was one of the big things that let to the creation of the Comics Code Authority.

People need to spend their time more wisely.

 

[raybia]

I've never thought of them as gay either, just eccentric. Next thing we'll know someone will try & put the Odd Couple, Beavis & Butthead, or even Batman & Robin as "gay" because they're always together.

Wait a minute! The Odd Couple aren't gay? But Tony Randle was and the title all but tells you that that were gay.

 

[C. Lee]

Wait a minute! The Odd Couple aren't gay? But Tony Randle was and the title all but tells you that that were gay.

Not sure if you're being serious or joking here......

 

[the_ultimate_evil]

I find it funny that people tried so hard to apply sexual orientation to puppets that the creators had to make that claim.

i find it funny they try and do it to everything in the media.

 

[raybia]

Not sure if you're being serious or joking here......

Jokes, Jokes, just jokes. I grew up watching the Odd Couple.

 

[Pink Ranger]

Wait a minute! The Odd Couple aren't gay? But Tony Randle was and the title all but tells you that that were gay.

The Odd Couple aren't gay, but in long-term or married gay couples of my generation, I've often heard them describe each other (jokingly) as the "Felix" and "Oscar" of their relationship.

 

[Mace Bloodstone]

YES, a win for the straight community!!

 

[spideyboy_1111]

Sexuality needs maturity, and while it's true that many adults aren't mature enough to deal with it, young children are especially not mature enough. This is a show directed at children at an age where they (should) have no concept of sexuality at all, and are probably confused at the differences between boys and girls. Most see the opposite sex as "icky" and will even turn up their noses in disgust at their parents kissing.

actually to be fair... i've seen far more children handle finding out what being gay is, much more maturely than most adults.. [YT]bAORctYVw2g[/YT]

 

[spideyboy_1111]

I've never thought of them as gay either, just eccentric. Next thing we'll know someone will try & put the Odd Couple, Beavis & Butthead, or even Batman & Robin as "gay" because they're always together.

lol... to be fair, that's been going on for far longer than any other "gay duo" and has been the topic of several hilarious (yet also at times actually intriguing) debates for decades now...

and haha, Beavis and Butthead have totally boned eachother.. they were too stupid to know what they were doing anyway

 

[Bat-Mite]

actually to be fair... i've seen far more children handle finding out what being gay is, much more maturely than most adults.. [YT]bAORctYVw2g[/YT]

Some of the comments in this topic made me think of that kid too. Haha. He's awesome. The fact of the matter is, homophobia or even discomfort about homosexuality is something that is learned, something that is taught by our culture. A lot of kids don't have that prejudice engraved into their brains yet, so they don't really have a problem with it.

 

[spideyboy_1111]

Some of the comments in this topic made me think of that kid too. Haha. He's awesome. The fact of the matter is, homophobia or even discomfort about homosexuality is something that is learned, something that is taught by our culture. A lot of kids don't have that prejudice engraved into their brains yet, so they don't really have a problem with it.

and sadly... some parents feel having no prejudice or fear towards it will make their kids gay. I feel those people shouldn't be having kids...

 

[danoyse]

actually to be fair... i've seen far more children handle finding out what being gay is, much more maturely than most adults.. [YT]bAORctYVw2g[/YT]

I love that video.

 

[spideyboy_1111]

I love that video.

 

[danoyse]

Starting a petition to demand that the producers of Sesame Street "out," the puppets seems like an attempt to force the puppets to be gay to me. I think all parties involved need a good smack upside the head. The petitioners for having nothing better to do with their time than apply sexuality to puppets and the producers for addressing this with anything more than an eyeroll.

CTW has been addressing this with an eyeroll for years now, they've done the smart thing and ignored it, and it hadn't been more than a playful joke until recently.

But this whole silliness with a petition and it becoming a news story this week made them force their hand a little, and it was a quick, end-of-story statement. I think the story is done now, and CTW made it clear that it like will not be addressed again.

With the attention it was getting this week, I think it would have been detrimental to them not to just put out that fire with a statement.

People get dumb over Sesame Street. 10 years ago, when they introduced a character with HIV on the South African version of the show, people in Congress actually sent them a letter reminding them that this character "would not be welcome here."