Ask the Flying Monkey: Is Peppermint Patty a Lesbian?

This week: is catalog retailer Stonewall Kitchen burying the fact that it's gay? What’s the story behind 1 Girl 5 Gays? Whatever happened to Leather Tuscadero?

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Q: Growing up, I was a huge fan of the Peanuts comic strips and collected all the TV specials. After I came out and when he was alive, I wondered what Charles M Schulz's relationship was with the LGBT community, especially considering that Billie Jean King, a major lesbian icon, was mentioned frequently throughout the strip, and many people site Peppermint Patty and Marcie as pre-lesbian. Yet he seems to have been a conservative man. So what were his thoughts and insights on the LGBT community? – Snoopyfan, Hudson, New Hampshire

A: Years ago, when Charles M. Schulz was still alive, I was writing an article on politics in the comic strips for the Los Angeles Times. I called up his office in Santa Rosa, California, introduced myself, and asked to schedule an interview with him. The receptionist said, “Sure thing,” and twenty seconds later, Schulz picked up the phone in his studio – despite the fact that I had not yet prepared any questions.

I hemmed and hawed my way through the interview, but he could not have been a nicer or more willing to talk. In its last couple of decades, Peanuts had taken a disappointing and obvious dive in quality (something I awkwardly asked Mr. Schultz about, and he passionately denied in our interview), but the fact is, in its hey-day from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, the strip was simply the best that’s ever been.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I think the strip is one of the most important literary works of the 20^th century – a perfect combination of both humor and pathos, and high and popular art.

So what did Schultz think of The Gays? Unfortunately, I didn’t ask him, and he died in 2000. The height of his success was back in the 1970s, before the GLBT community went truly mainstream so, as far as I know, he was never asked specifically what he thought of us.

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz

He is on record as saying that Peppermint Patty isn’t a lesbian (which – her tomboy qualities and her friendship with Marcie notwithstanding – she absolutely isn’t. Her unrequited love for Charlie Brown is a frequent and on-going theme in the strip. Marcie is also clearly in love with “Charles.” Maybe they’re both bisexual, although it bears repeating the characters are only eight-years-old).

I have no idea what Schultz’s personal politics were, and he was definitely a modest, unassuming person when I talked to him. He was also a military veteran, a passionate lover of sports, and something of an amateur biblical scholar.

But it seems obvious to me where his true sensibilities lay: at least in the later years of his life, he didn’t identify as a Christian, but rather as a “secular humanist,” and he was good friends with Billy Jean King.

Then there is the strip itself, which takes a decidedly open-minded, live-and-let-live approach to almost all things (and frequently mocks Lucy’s judgmental nature and ignorant-and-proud-of-it small-mindedness).

Peppermint Patty isn’t a lesbian, but she was still an extraordinary, even revolutionary character when she was introduced to the strip in 1966: a proud and unapologetic tomboy who wears pants and sandals rather than a dress, and who is apparently the best athlete in town, male or female. This was at a time when such female characters were extremely rare in popular culture, except as objects of ridicule.

But the most remarkable thing about Patty is that she was completely unremarkable in the strip. Patty’s implosion of gender stereotypes is accepted by all the other kids without question, as if it’s simply one other perfectly acceptable way to be.

Likewise, when Schulz introduced the strip’s first racial minority, Franklin, in 1968, his being an African American is also never commented upon – the boy is simply accepted by all the other kids. Real-life adults weren’t nearly so understanding: Schulz faced controversy in the American South when Franklin was seen going to school alongside Peppermint Patty and Marcie in a clearly desegregated school.

It’s easy to take these characters for granted in a world where these sort gender and racial differences are now (mostly) accepted. But part of the reason they are accepted now is because of visionaries like Charles Schulz. The strip still reads as timeless, in part because Schulz tapped into universal, eternal themes. And it still reads fresh, because Schulz was at least fifty years ahead of the rest of us.

Next Page! What is this catalogue I keep getting for Stonewall Kitchens, and why does it seem like they’re burying the fact that they’re “gay”?