I love that Rogers supported Clemmons and truly had no issue with his sexual orientation. Rogers could’ve simply said to not be openly gay on his show, but he went as far as advising him for the long haul. If you read this as a single headline, it’s way too easy to misconstrue as homophobia, but the reality was that Rogers had a deep understanding of society and how to traverse it to survive and have a career in such socially chaotic times.

At some point, someone has to be the first person to come out or it never happens. The Stonewall Riots were a turning point in large part because they illustrated how The Closet could easily become a coffin LGBTQ folks were buried in, if they weren't recognized as deserving the same civil rights as their straight peers.

Fred Rogers put the fate of the show and the careers involved ahead of the need for publicly accessible gay people. He wasn't alone and the risks of coming out sooner were all real. But the consequence of a collective closeting of the community was the delaying of the fight for their civil rights for decades. It could further be argued that this mass closeting contributed to the deliberate foot-dragging by state and federal officials in addressing the AIDS epidemic.

I don't know anyone over 40 who can't name a family member or a friend who wasn't lost to this horrifying disease. Huge swaths of the LGBTQ community were functionally exterminated by a national health system that undermined efforts to diagnose, treat, and develop cures for the disease. What ultimately outed so many gay men across the Americas and Europe was their obituary.

Yeah. It was something that deserves some critique, but I think ultimately at that point in history, sadly, Rogers was right. It wouldn't have gone well, in the shortterm at least

Much respect for introspection 👍