Sesame Street responds after ex-writer says Bert and Ernie are a gay couple: They "do not have a sexual orientation"

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Mark Saltzman, who began writing for Sesame Street in 1984, said in an interview with Queerty the duo are a reflection of his same-sex relationship with film editor Arnold Glassman, joking that he's Ernie while Arnold is Bert. "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. 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," Saltzman told Queerty. "I didn't have any other way to contextualize them." Sesame Workshop responded to the interview via a Twitter statement, saying: "As we have always said, 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." ALSO: Why is Bert trending higher on Twitter than Ernie?