“The matter of gender could change the entire equation,” Mr. Spock said to Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy in “Metamorphosis,” in the second season of the original “Star Trek.” That episode aired on November 10, 1967, just as, elsewhere in TV-land, the Children’s Television Workshop was being assembled, and two years to the day before the premiere of “Sesame Street.” Those two franchises have been caught up, in the last few weeks, in an intersecting pair of mini-controversies. First, an Internet petition was started urging Bert and Ernie’s controllers to get them married. And then J. J. Abrams, who directed a “rebooted” “Star Trek” movie and is at work on another, expressed some concerns about whether an openly gay character would be “distracting.” (Both Andrew Sullivan and Alyssa Rosenberg have been on the case.)