Bert and Ernie

“Hey Bert”
“Hey Ernie”

The odd couple of Sesame Street. Are they gay? Are they just close friends?

As a medium devised to educate children in both basic arithmetic and language, and social awareness, Sesame Street has been the model for many similar shows throughout the world and, typically, if the handling of the introduction of an HIV+ muppet is considered, the show treads carefully in ‘controversial’ areas, and takes a sensible approach to the education of children about such social issues. They don’t force the information, they merely present it as something that happens in every day life, and hopefully the children will then discuss it with their parents. Very sensible.

So I can only hope the film that made it’s debut at the Sundance festival is not viewed by children. Let’s bring up our children to not care whether someone is gay or not, let’s bring up our children to accept the blank canvas as a starting fact. Let’s bring up our children without the prejudices that we have, or have inherited. At the very least, let’s bring up our children to think for themselves, and to question the values of others.

On the same topic, this article seems odd, considering it comes from a Gay and Lesbian Youth magazine. I’m not that attuned to gay culture, but I would imagine, like ANY culture, that the re-enforcing of stereotypes would be something they wanted to avoid.

Or maybe, considering this is a ‘spoof’ movie and was no doubt produced tongue-in-cheek, I’m getting all worked up about nothing.

Maybe.