From Twinkies to Gerbils: The History of the Gay Urban Legend

Urban Legend: a modern story of obscure origin and with little or no supporting evidence that spreads spontaneously in varying forms and often has elements of humor, moralizing, or horror.

Alligators in the sewers, missing kidneys, vanishing hitchhikers, bloody hooks on car doors: urban legends have been around since the advent of the distinctly human phenomenon known as gossip.

Contemporary urban legends date back to the shift in American morals in the 1950’s, and most early examples involved sex; or, rather, trying to instill the fear of sex. The moral of stories like “The Bloody Hook” was simple - good girls don’t! Teenage girls were taught that if they dared to let their animal instincts take over, and parked with a boy, bad things would happen. If a girl put herself in this situation, she was guaranteed to end the night seeing her boyfriend’s lifeless body swinging from a tree over the car.

The early 60’s brought another cultural shift. The period between the Korean and Vietnam wars brought a certain level of prosperity to the average American family. Mom and Dad became social drinkers and hit the town more, thus giving rise to the “Babysitter” stories, where we learned the horrors of having an upstairs phone extension!

In the mid 70’s, backlash against the feminist movement gave us plenty of “Women in Peril” stories that taught single women that there was a price for choosing to live without a man. These stories advised us to always check the backseat before entering a car, and taught us that humans can lick, too.

The gay rights movement also gained prominence in the 70’s, which led to another shift in the themes of urban legends. As gay visibility and acceptance started to rise, so did the number of stories of the evils and perversions of “that lifestyle.”

Let’s take a look at a few of the most persistent, troubling, outrageous, or just plain wrong gay urban legends.

The Hollywood star and the misplaced gerbil

If you ask a man on the street to name a “gay” urban legend, you’ll most likely hear the story of a certain Hollywood actor and a gerbil. According to this legend, which has been around for almost thirty years, said actor was rushed to the hospital (sometimes it’s in Los Angeles, sometimes in San Francisco), and had to have emergency surgery to remove a dead rodent from his rectum. (Sometimes the little critter proves amazingly resilient, and is removed alive.) It’s discovered that the man was using the gerbil to sexually satisfy himself.

This legend has two important, and equally vile, components. First and foremost, the fact that it’s considered a “gay” story, and not a “bestiality” story shows how confused people are about what constitutes gay sexuality. People are quick to associate anal penetration of any sort with gay sex, even when there’s absolutely nothing gay about a married man putting a rodent in his … well, you get the point.

Of course, the fact that not all gay men engage in anal sex, and plenty of heterosexuals do, doesn’t dissuade many people from believing that our sex lives are deviant and unnatural.

The second reason that this legend has endured is because of the celebrity in question, and if you examine the reasoning behind it, it makes it all the more sad. This man has been very gay friendly from the beginning of his career, playing gay roles and surrounding himself with gay friends. It’s probably because of this that he was targeted for this specific lie, and it’s a shame he had to pay for his acceptance of the gay community with this albatross around his neck.

Bert and Ernie are more than roommates

One of the biggest and most misguided fears of some straight people is that gays are somehow trying to “recruit the children.” What better way to accomplish that than by brainwashing them through Sesame Street? The urban legend that Muppets Bert and Ernie are a gay couple (and in some instances, about to get married on the show) has been around for so long that the Children’s Television Workshop occasionally re-releases this statement denouncing it:

“Bert and Ernie, who've been on Sesame Street for 25 years, do not portray a gay couple, and there are no plans for them to do so in the future. They are puppets, not humans. Like all the Muppets created for Sesame Street, they were designed to help educate preschoolers. Bert and Ernie are characters who help demonstrate to children that despite their differences, they can be good friends."

The genesis of this story is likely a book written in 1980 by Spy magazine founder Kurt Andersen called The Real Thing. "Bert and Ernie conduct themselves in the same loving, discreet way that millions of gay men, women and hand puppets do," Anderson jokingly wrote. "They do their jobs well and live a splendidly settled life together in an impeccably decorated cabinet."