Photo by supa_pedro
As you may have heard, change.org has started a petition
asking the producers of Sesame Street
to have Bert and Ernie wed, now that gay marriage is legal in the state of New
York.
According to their site, here’s the rationale behind their
plea:
In this horrid age of LGBTQ kids taking their own lives and being beaten for who they are, [they] need to know that they're BEAUTIFUL, as Christine's song goes. Bullies that facilitate those tragedies be it verbal or otherwise should be taught that homophobia is NOT okay. Children and parents need to learn that acceptance of humankind, even puppets, would indeed plant a seed of peace that will reverberate throughout the universe. We are not asking that Sesame Street depict anything crude or disrespectful; this is NOT about any other issue other than education. Sesame Street claims Bert and Ernie are only friends, though that's how marriage begins, right?
Personally we’re cool with
whatever Ernie and Bert want to do. We respect anyone’s right to marry… or not.
No pressure on our account.
But we were a bit surprised
by the Sesame Street camp’s response
to the request:
"Bert and Ernie are best
friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends
with those who are very different from themselves… Even though they are
identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics
(as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a
sexual orientation."
That’s where they lose us.
Are they trying to tell us after all this time that Miss Piggy and Kermit don’t
have any sexual orientation? Their whole shtick is based on Miss Piggy trying
to get her frog.
What about those Muppets that
have five people in their family (and there’s not one of them they’d
swap)? There is a sister and two brothers and a mother and a
pop. How’d that happen, huh?
And then, of course, there’s
Gonzo. He sure is into all those chickens. So shouldn’t what’s good for the
goose be good for the gander, so to speak?
Again we say live and let
live. If Ernie and Bert are just two single gentleman sharing a small apartment
in the heart of Sesame Street, that’s no skin off our noses. But let’s not
start changing the Muppet lore just for the sake of an albeit somewhat
ridiculous political argument about felt characters. Until the rules apply to
all puppet-kind, it seems like a dark day on Sesame Street to us.
To sign the petition visit
change.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment