Sesame Street, a pivotal marker in almost every person’s childhood, recently sent out a heartfelt memo to the LGBTQ+ community.

On June 23, the Twitter account for the classic TV series tweeted the following photograph that features seven of its adored characters arranged in resemblance of the rainbow flag alongside a sincere message that states, “Sesame Street is proud to support families of all shapes, sizes, and colors.”

As of yesterday (27th) afternoon, the tweet has received over 129,000 likes and 53,000 retweets as Twitter erupted with positive responses and appreciation filled with emotion.

“It’s nice to see positivity when there is so much negativity in the world.” - Mars, @awkwarotl

“There is true beauty in seeing a children’s show that so openly accepts people like this.” - Abbie LeGrand, @make_a_change75

“I love you, Sesame Street.” - Lisa McGreevy, @lisah

“Thank you for helping me grow up to focus more on love than hate, laughter more than anger, and pride in diversity.” - Josh Neff, @joshuamneff

As expected, there was some presence of backlash. For example, LifeSiteNews attacked Sesame Street’s inclusive effort in a blog post on their site in which they accused them of “promoting the politicization and sexualization of kids.” However, the one thing everyone who has ever viewed the iconic show can agree upon is that, in addition to continuously pushing for respect and diversity, the show never applied pressure to assigning genders to any of the characters. Inclusivity as its best!