Frank OzVerified account

Why are they not? Not arguing...just wondering.. He said he wrote from that POV...

I created Bert. I know what and who he is.

you may have created the puppet but it’s now art in the public view. your creations are whatever the viewer feels they are. yours is just one of thousands of interpretations on the characters.

Help me to understand this please. You’re equating the viewer with the creator. Is that right? After Picasso created Guernica his perception of his work carried the same amount of weight as any viewer? I’m not being sarcastic. I’m really trying to understand.

It's because even though a message was not intended to be carried through a work of art, it comes to symbolize something different. In a group such as LGBTQ people, who have had to create spaces, they have found symbols and representations of themselves where it was not meant.

We see an intimacy, a bond in Bert and Ernie we recognize in our own relationships, that reflects our own. It may not have ever been intended that way, but that's what we see when we look at them. They have become gay through our identification with them.

They don't *HAVE* to be gay in that it's openly stated, it's just that's what we see when we look at them and so that's what they have become to us. It really is like two people seeing the same work of art and taking away to different feelings of connection to it.

So yes, they are just puppets. No, you don't *HAVE* to cover them in rainbows and have them march in a parade. But the way they have become cultural symbols for all of us, this is the way we connect to them. For *US* that's who they are and always will be.

But why clarify if it doesn’t matter?

For honesty

But if you took the words "they're not, of course" out of your tweet would it be any less honest? ps: I am among millions who was changed for the better by your work. Just saying.

Yes. It would have been less honest. I would then have allowed Bert to be "labeled" as something I know he's not.

You're saying it's "honest" to say that they are not gay. Isn't this writer being honest by saying that he wrote them as gay, bc he pulled real life experiences from his relationship w/ his partner? Whether or not you CREATED them as gay, when HE wrote them, he wrote them gay.

Why the need to define people as gay? Uh, because we exist. I’m gay. 100% gay. Always have been, always will be. I’ve known since I was 7, and was told what the word meant. Yes, there are a lot of bi and pan people out there, but there are also A LOT of gay people.

But why accept being defined as only one aspect of oneself??

Good lord. You sound like my mom did when I came out.

You are fortunate to have such a wise mother who sees you for who you are

See though, she didn't. She only wanted to see the version of me she had hoped for, and that version wasn't gay, and also wasn't real. Me saying that I was gay was not me saying that I was *only* gay, and nothing else. It was just me saying that part was important too. And real.