Bert and Ernie: best buddies in an over-sexualized culture

Life Site News ^ | August 29, 2011 | CHUCK COLSON

[NYer]

Bert & Ernie from Sesame Street

August 29, 2011 (Breakpoint.org) - Sesame Workshop, the company that produces the kid’s show “Sesame Street,” announced last week the Bert and Ernie will not be getting married.

Bert and Ernie, two of the show’s Muppets, are best buddies. They live in the same house and sleep in the same room — in separate twin beds. They bicker, they share, they enjoy a bedtime cookie together every night.

They’re such good friends that some assume they must be gay. And one group used an online petition to ask “Sesame Street” to let the truth be known. Bert and Ernie, they say, should come out of the closet and get married. This would presumably teach tolerance and respect for differences — something, the petitioners note, “Sesame Street” has tried to do for years.

But “Sesame Street” has made it clear that Bert and Ernie are puppets and as such, “Do not have a sexual orientation.” Good point: but that’s not the only reason that their getting married was a bad idea.

Writing in US News & World Report, Peter Roff notes that there are things little children do not need to know. “[S]ome stages of life,” he writes, “for example, the years from 2 to 4 [Sesame Street’s demographic] — must be walled off from the passions of adults.”

And blogger Alyssa Rosenberg summed up the biggest objection. “I think it’s actively unhelpful to gay and straight men alike,” she said, “to perpetuate the idea that all same-sex roommates, be they puppet or human, must necessarily be a gay couple ... Such assumptions narrow the aperture of what we understand as heterosexual masculinity in a really strange way.”

Strange indeed. It teaches the ridiculous and deeply destructive idea that same-sex friendships are necessarily sexual. And that’s the last thing we want to teach our children, because it will spell the end of friendship, particularly friendships between young men.

Yet that is precisely the message that’s communicated over and over. It’s the reason gay apologists want to eroticize Bert and Ernie, David and Jonathan, Jesus and the apostle John, and Achilles and Patroclus from Homer’s Iliad.

Some in our culture are apparently incapable of understanding close friendship without sex. And that flies right in the face of a Christian understanding of friendship.

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” wrote the great thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas.

As Christian brothers and sisters we are called to deep friendships with one another. And while we may be more comfortable with the word “fellowship” than “friendship,” Christian relationships marked by love, honesty, selflessness, intensity, and a chaste brotherly or sisterly passion for one another are a powerful witness to the love of God in our largely friendless world.

Bert and Ernie, in spite of differences in personality and temperament — and without any sexual overtones — are the very best of friends. And our kids need that kind of example. They need it from television, parents, and especially the Church in order to see through the hyper-sexualized fog that’s all around them.

[allmendream]

And when his shirt comes off, where does Donald cover?

[Antoninus]

People from the classic Greek period and after had an almost universal understanding that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers.

You forced me to do some research on this most distasteful of subjects and here's what I found. I realize this article is from Wikipedia, but what it says here makes sense:

Homosexuality in Ancient Greece -- Achilles and Patroclus

But maybe modern scholars can read and understand classic Greek writing and sources better than Plato.

Keep in mind that Plato himself was likely a catamite of Socrates and a pederast as well. Given what we know today about the mania of homosexuals for appropriating their lust onto past generations in search of commonality and approbation, why would it surprise you that Plato and others of his generation would do the same, particularly when it came to heroes like Achilles?

[Steamburg]

Since you asked. Someone had suggested that J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter hero characters might well be used to convey conservative ideals, loyalty, self reliance, and personal integrity.
Ms. Rowlings apparently felt that she needed to make amends to her liberal friends. She suggested that; although not mentioned in the Harry Potter Novels, she had imagined several of the wizards had been rogering each other before they suffered a severe falling out. The timing and character embellishments were such that most believed that she was betraying her characters to prevent them from being taken captive by the evil right.

[allmendream]

Few things surprise me, but we are talking of a semi-mythological figure from ancient Greece, as such a play-write 300 years after Homer are just as authoritative as Homer in ‘making the legend’. Achilles was not a character invented by Homer.

So if there really was an Achilles and Patroclus, which is likely - they may or may not have actually been lovers. But it would not have been uncommon at that time or among the inheritors of their culture and language.

Homer was as far removed from the actual persons (if they were indeed actual persons) as subsequent authors were from him. He may have either played up or played down their status as lovers according to his own proclivities or the reception he wished from his audience. The end result was one that certainly suggested they were a lot closer than just ‘brothers in arms’ - without outright saying they were lovers.

Subsequent writers, like Plato, interpreted Homer's work, and possibly works that didn't survive, to mean that they were definitely lovers.

What is clear to me is that it was not our own “over-sexualized” culture that interprets Achilles and Patroclus as lovers - and as such it was a horrid example.

It may well be a case, as you suggest, that the subsequent Greek ‘over-homosexualized’ culture interpreted these two semi-historic and somewhat mythological figures to be lovers.

But it is ABSOLUTELY CLEAR from the historic record that the homo interpretation is not a modern anachronism.

[allmendream]

In fact, the most modern retelling of the story to enter the public consciousness was the movie “Troy” - and lo and behold our “over-sexualized” culture made Patroclus the “cousin” of Achilles.

So far from being a good example of our “over-sexualized” culture emphasizing homosexuality - Achilles and Patroclus are actually contrary examples.

Their possible homosexuality, which was widely accepted in ancient Greece, was absolutely downplayed in our modern mass media culture. I think they saw the ticket sales for “Alexander” and decided their course was clear! ;)

[GraceG]

Making Bert and Ernie officially gay will ruin all the jokes about them being gay.

[GraceG]

[ Ernie already pledged to Rubber Ducky that he was “The One.” ]

Oh great, just bring bestiality into this....

[Cronos]

thanks. I did not know that