'And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. On September 16th, 2018, Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman, who began writing for the show fifteen years after the characters were introduced, revealed in an interview with Queerty that Bert and Ernie were analogs for his own intimate relationship with film editor Arnold Glassman. Many argued that it would be beneficial to portray a same-sex couple on Sesame Street. Many members of the gay community voiced their frustration with Sesame Workshop's refusal to acknowledge a sexual relationship between Bert and Ernie. They watched the Supreme Court overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (shown below). On June 27th, 2013, The New Yorker's cover featured an illustration of Bert and Ernie cuddling on the couch as In 1994, former Sesame Workshop head, Gary Knell, said that Bert and Ernie “are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets. Although Bert and Ernie did not share a bed, viewers still held on to the possibility of an intimate relationship between the two. Puppeteers and writers, Frank Oz and Jim Henson, created the characters which were said to be based on their own friendship with one another. The two characters were depicted as best friends who shared a bedroom in their apartment on 123 Sesame Street. In July 1969, the pilot episode of Sesame Street was broadcast, which featured two male Muppet roommates named Bert and Ernie.
