What, exactly, is the “gay rat wedding” meme and where did it originate?

There are plenty of memes relating to the LGBTQ+ community, however one that often gets people scratching their heads is the so-called “gay rat wedding” meme. So allow us to enlighten you.

The “gay rat wedding” meme is also known as the “Mr Ratburn is Gay” meme, though the former title is more colloquially used.

It refers to an episode of the PBS Kids animated show Arthur, in which Arthur’s teacher Mr. Ratburn gets married to another man.

The episode was titled “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone” and aired on PBS Kids in May, 2019 as the season 22 premiere.

During the episode, Arthur and his friends learn that their teacher Mr. Ratburn is getting married, though they are under the impression he is getting hitched to a woman named Patty. They later attend his wedding and find out that Mr. Ratburn is actually betrothed to a man named Patrick, who is the local chocolatier.

It was the first episode of Arthur to feature a same-sex wedding, and though it received positive critical reviews overall and a nomination for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids and Family Programming, some anti-LGBTQ+ groups such as One Million Moms were angry about the depiction.

Two PBS member stations in Arkansas and Alabama chose not to air the episode, with Alabama Public Television saying: “Our feeling is that we basically have a trust with parents about our programming. This program doesn’t fit into that.”

Posts about the episode went viral as people shared screenshots of the wedding and expressed their joy at Mr. Ratburn being canonically gay in the children’s TV show.

However, many people also shared negative posts claiming the story was “LGBTQ+ propaganda”, leading pro-LGBTQ+ social media users to poke fun at their bigoted views and write “I support gay rats” on Twitter (now known as X).

The phrase “gay rat wedding” was also used widely, with many posts calling out the blatant homophobia behind not wanting two cartoon, anthropomorphic rats that are coded as male to be married, while other posts simply pointed out that the term “gay rat wedding” is extremely funny.

There was even a Reddit post where a man discussed having an issue with his girlfriend wanting to wear a dress to a gay wedding that was inspired by the meme – it divided the internet as many people said she was being “inappropriate” and “homophobic”, leading to the man confronting her.

He ended up attending the wedding alone and single.

It turns out this was a good choice as he updated his post to say that one of the grooms had said he would have kicked the couple out of the wedding if she had worn the dress.