Break out the white gowns, we’re having a coming-out party!

After years of speculation, it’s been confirmed by former “Sesame Street” writer Mark Saltzman that puppet roommates Bert and Ernie are not just best friends as the show has long publicly stated but a same-sex couple.

“I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing ‘Bert & Ernie,’ they were” out, Saltzman explained in an interview with Queerty. “I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them. ... I don’t think I’d know how else to write them but as a loving couple.”

Saltzman joined the children’s television series in 1985, 16 years after the characters debuted, and wrote scripts and songs for the show until 1998. In the interview, he revealed that Bert and Ernie were essentially Muppet versions of himself and his longtime partner, film editor Arnold Glassman. The two lived together during Saltzman’s time writing for the show. (Glassman died in 2003.) Saltzman described himself as “cautiously out” at work when he joined the series and said there were other gay people working on the show, including performer Richard Hunt and writer Judy Freudberg.

Saltzman’s revelation comes after decades of pop culture references, innuendos and jokes claiming the Muppet characters were a gay couple, including on “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “Saturday Night Live,” “Friends” and “Modern Family.” Members of the LGBT community even adopted the pair as icons with Bert and Ernie costumes and merchandise being a frequent presence at Gay Pride events. In July 2013, the New Yorker magazine chose an illustration of Bert and Ernie by artist Jack Hunter, titled “Moment of Joy,” as the cover of their July 8, 2013 issue following two crucial Supreme Court rulings. The high court determined that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional, and that backers of California’s Proposition 8 did not have standing to appeal a federal district court decision invalidating the measure’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Officially, though, this does not change the characters’ biographies: Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind the show, continues to state that Bert and Ernie are just friends. Sesame Workshop said on Twitter that “even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics ... they remain puppets and do not have a sexual orientation.”

Go tell that to the legions of LGBT adults who grew up with the almost-50-year-old characters and could sense that queer subtext between the two since before they could name it.

Historically, with a lack of representation in media, LGBT viewers looked for reflections of themselves in characters that frequently fell between the sexual lines.

Think about relationships like the one between James Dean’s and Sal Mineo’s characters in the film “Rebel Without a Cause” in the 1950s, or “Xena Warrior Princess” and her faithful “friend” Gabrielle in the 1990s. Or think of the comic book fans who have seen superheroes like the X-Men as gay stand-ins as they dealt with institutionalized discrimination because of their superhuman “other” status. These were all characters that queer fans rushed to identify as examples of coded gay lives.

Bert and Ernie fell very much between those lines for queer viewers looking for an example of a loving (if sometimes irritable) long-term couple. LGBT people “knew” that Bert and Ernie were family as clearly as we knew that “The Wizard of Oz” was one giant gay metaphor (don’t get me started …) and that the Rankin and Bass animated “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” special was a story about coming to gay acceptance (it’s all there if you know to watch for it).

But in 2018, do we need out gay puppet characters?

For this gay viewer, the answer is yes: We need them as much as we need flesh-and-blood LGBT representation. If Bert and Ernie’s inferred queer life together brought even one child comfort — either a child grappling with their own identity or the child of same-sex parents — imagine the good that an out and proud Bert and Ernie could do during those formative years.

Seeing oneself, even if you can’t quite identify who you are at a tender young age, is the ultimate affirmation. Sesame Workshop, don’t fight it any longer. Let the felt ones love one another! If Bert can stand Ernie’s ever-present rubber duckie and Ernie accepts Bert’s unibrow, who are we to judge?

Besides, on a street where an 8-foot-tall bird and a monster who lives in a garbage receptacle can be readily accepted as residents, is a gay couple really that big a deal?

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com