Bring Back Bert and Ernie

As most of you know, the characters of Bert and Ernie were removed from the children's show Sesame Street. Their removal from the show was motivated by homophobia, paranoia, ignorance, and sexism.

Because the parents saw two best friends living together, assumed they were gay, and complained that the show was telling kids that homosexuality was okay. Since when does being good friends and living together automatically translate to being lovers?

Look, people live with their friends all the time. It's very normal to have a room mate of the same sex, and it's also normal for that room mate to be your friend. I mean, I'd rather share an apartment with a friend than a complete stranger! Living with someone of the same sex is practically the norm in college. Unless your school allows coed dorm rooms, which most don't, your options are live alone or with someone of the same gender.

It's also common after college. News flash: most people don't get married straight out of school anymore! So what are we supposed to do between college and marriage? We gotta live somewhere, and there are three main options: Live alone, which tends to be the most expensive option, and can also be lonely and isolating for some people; live with your significant other, which can be cheaper, but is usually frowned upon in our society, in fact even living with a friend of the opposite sex is often discouraged because people either assume you're having sex or assume sexual temptation will eventually get the better of you; the final option is to live with a friend of your own sex, which is also cheaper, but nowhere near as frowned upon . . .

At least, for most people it's not a big deal. Apparently to some people, if two people of the same gender live together, they must be gay. These same people probably condemn the idea of people living with the opposite sex as well. Do they really want us all to live alone?

I guess you have to look at it from their perspective. It used to be that people got married just out of college, sometimes even while they were in school. After college, unmarried men were expected to get jobs, make money, and live alone. If a woman wasn't married or in college, she moved back home until she was married. This was based on a bunch of factors - for one thing, women either didn't work or didn't make enough money to live alone; also, there was the notion that women needed to be looked after and protected, that they weren't capable of living on their own, that they weren't responsible. This is supported by the fact that colleges had special rules for "protecting" female students, like early curfews. There were also laws that prevented women from being independent. For example, a woman couldn't apply for her own credit card without a man to cosign for her. I could go on and on, I have my women's studies textbook in my lap, but I won't bore you.

Perhaps today's parents grew up with the notion that living together meant intimacy, and that it wasn't acceptable to live with someone you weren't married with. Notins of compulsary heterosexuality and lesbian baiting probably kept people from living with their friends of the same gender, for fear of being seen as "gay."

So what are our kids supposed to learn? That having a room mate means they're either gay or sexually promiscuous? Or that men are supposed to live alone, and women should live at home until they're married. Consider this: how many female characters on Sesame Street live alone? Not many, as I recall. Most of the girls are either kids who live at home, or adults who are married. As I remember it, all of the characters who did live alone were men.