theglowpt2:

theglowpt2:

mr rogers being potentially bisexual is cool i guess but i feel like that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that francois clemmons, who played officer clemmons on mister rogers’ neighborhood, is a gay man who was pressured to hide his identity for decades in order to be allowed to remain on the show 

before this spreads too much and people in the notes start getting defensive and think i’m attacking mr rogers or saying he’s not a good guy, that’s not the case at all. I think fred rogers was an admirable person but i think this is a good example of how no one, not even the ~purest~ of role models, are entirely perfect and how everyone is liable to do some things wrong and get caught up in the prejudices of their society and time. Later in life he reportedly realized he had made a mistake in urging clemmons to stay closeted and encouraged him to embrace his sexuality and pursue relationships with men. Clemmons still views him as a great friend and mentor and says that mr rogers was one of the only people he could talk to about being gay. 

so this isn’t a post to be like “mr rogers was a homophobe” because i definitely don’t think he was. I think he was an imperfect human being, just like anyone else, whose views and openness towards the lgbt evolved over time. And if he was somewhere on the Not Straight spectrum, i think that’s very neat, especially being bisexual myself, but i think it’s more important to acknowledge the story and legacy of a (now) openly gay man who had to struggle with homophobia and institutional prejudice his entire life and sacrifice parts of himself to be accepted and successful in his career rather than zeroing in on a detail that suggests that a man who didn’t face these same challenges, and who played a role in clemmons remaining closeted, was lgbt himself. 

anyway here’s a very powerful video from francois clemmons if you’re interested in knowing more about his story