Tweet May Finally Settle SpongeBob's Sexuality

Nickelodeon rekindled the question of SpongeBob Squarepants' sexuality Saturday with a tweet celebrating Pride month, USA Today reports. "Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month," the tweet reads along with images of Spongebob, Michael Cohen from Henry Danger, and Avatar Korra from The Legend of Korra. As fans know, Cohen has told Time he transitioned from female to male nearly 20 years ago, and Korra is bisexual. The question of SpongeBob's sexuality goes back at least to 2005, when two conservative Christian groups said the animated character and his friend Patrick Starfish encouraged a gay lifestyle.

People reported at the time that the late Stephen Hillenberg, who created the show, said "we never intended them to be gay. I consider them to be almost asexual. We're just trying to be funny and this has got nothing to do with the show." But the notion lived on: "Spongebob gay? i thought yall knew this already," tweets @Carti4Pres, while @iam_johnw writes that "Everyone shocked that nick tweeted out spongebob gay, when this literally was in an episode." That's a reference to the episode in which Spongebob pal Patrick wears a female disguise and attracts the interest of two male characters. Anyway, as @ApolloLXXXIX puts it, "I don’t care if spongebob is asexual, bisexual or gay, I stan him." (More SpongeBob stories.)