The cover of next week’s New Yorker magazine will celebrate a turning point in history for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the U.S.
The cover depicts the long-rumoured same-sex couple Bert and Ernie snuggled up together looking at a black and white TV image of Supreme Court Justices.
LGBT people, same-sex couples and their supporters were overjoyed on Wednesday when two U.S. Supreme Court rulings marked a major step toward equality in the country.
The rulings, one on California’s same-sex marriage ban (Proposition 8) and another that abolished the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), marked a major milestone in the more than four-decade old battle for LGBT rights.
Read more: America reacts to DOMA and Proposition 8 rulings
It was 44 years ago Friday that the Stonewall riots, in New York City, began.
The riots, spurred by repeated police raids on the Stonewall Inn – a gay bar in Greenwich Village — are widely considered the event that triggered the gay rights movement.
News coverage during that era wasn’t exactly as supportive as it was this week – a July 6, 1969 headline in the New York Daily News read “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.”
Just two years earlier, CBS aired a documentary on homosexuality in which Mike Wallace said “The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested or capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.”
Watch a clip from the 1967 CBS documentary “The Homosexuals”
Today’s coverage stands in stark contrast to the coverage of the Stonewall era, acknowledged by the artist of the July 8 & 15 edition cover of the The New Yorker, Jack Hunter.
“It’s amazing to witness how attitudes on gay rights have evolved in my lifetime,” he said.
According to The New Yorker, Hunter originally posted the image on a Tumblr page.
“This is great for our kids, a moment we can all celebrate,” he said.
As for Bert and Ernie, and the status of their relationship, the Sesame Street Workshop addressed the perpetual roommates close friendship in a Facebook post in 2011:
“Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”
Meanwhile, on social media, the cover has garnered kudos and criticisms.
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