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After years of speculation (and countless jokes) Sesame Street went out of its way to make one thing perfectly clear this week: Bert and Ernie are just good friends. Yes, they’ve lived together for 40 years. They take the occasional bath together. They even share a bedroom. But rest assured, they do not share a bed. Despite what you may have heard, Bert and Ernie are not gay.

Sesame Workshop, the production team and non-profit organization behind the show, released a statement on Tuesday to clarify that Bert and Ernie have many human traits but “remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

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Make sure no one tells Kermit and Miss Piggy.

This statement comes after former Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman revealed in a Queerty interview that “I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were (a gay couple). I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them,” adding that he likened the pair to his own relationship. One was a little uptight, the other was a jokester. Hijinks ensued.

Sesame Workshop was quick to put the kibosh on that, as Frank Oz, who helped create Bert and Ernie with Jim Henson and other writers, was among the first to respond. “There’s much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness,” Oz tweeted.