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Was Fred Rogers secretly gay? Or bisexual?

The sexual orientation of the beloved children’s TV icon has long been a topic of curiosity, acknowledged Rogers’ biographer Michael Long who wrote in a 2016 essay that, yes, the soft-spoken creator of “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” wasn’t known for his machismo.

“(Rogers) talked softly and carried no stick; his spirit was gentle and tender, patient and trustworthy, and receptive and loving,” Long wrote.

The acclaimed 2018 documentary on Rogers’ life and career, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” addressed the question of his sexuality head-on but came to no conclusions. The film played a clip of talk show host Tom Snyder asking Rogers if he was straight. The film doesn’t show Rogers’ answer, but it shares an interview with Francois Clemmons, the gay actor who played Officer Clemmons on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” for 25 years.

“First of all, no, he’s not gay,” said Clemmons. “I tell everyone who asks me, ‘No, he’s not gay.’ But I spent enough time with him that if there was a gay vibe I would have picked it up. Nope, not as far as I know.”

This week, LGBTQ Twitter users believed they uncovered evidence that Rogers saw himself as bisexual, according to Pride.com. The evidence comes in the form of an excerpt from a 2015 biography of Rogers that began to make its way around the internet.

Related Articles A few things you might not know about Mister Rogers’ legendary TV career

Tom Hanks is absolutely perfect as Mister Rogers in new movie trailer The book, “The Good Neighbor,” shares a conversation Rogers had with a longtime friend, the openly gay Dr. William Hirsch. According to Hirsch, Rogers concluded that he belonged somewhere in “the middle” when it came to sexual orientation.

Rogers said that if sexuality was measured on a scale of one to 10, “Well, you know I must be right smack in the middle. Because I have found women attractive, and I have found men attractive.”

For everyone looking for a citation, it's in "The Good Neighbor" by King. Screenshot from Google books. pic.twitter.com/XMQxYwPUCX — Meandering Hermit (@GabrielLunesce) March 5, 2019

Rogers’ apparent admission to being attracted to both women and men had people on Twitter expressing profound delight, according to Pride.com.

“Holy (expletive),” one person on Twitter wrote. “Mr. Rogers was #bisexual and my life has meaning again, today is so blessed.”

“That sound you hear across Twitter is the shrieking of a thousand bisexual adults delighted to find out a childhood hero, Mr. Rogers, is one of our own,” wrote another.

“MR ROGERS IS THE BISEXUAL ICON THAT WE NEED IN 2019!!!!!” wrote still another.

Earlier in “The Good Neighbor,” Rogers laughed off the idea about not being “John Wayne” in a 1975 interview with the New York Times.

“I’m not John Wayne, so consequently, for some people, I’m not the model for the man in the house,” Rogers said.

In “The Good Neighbor,” Rogers’ longtime assistant Eliot Daley also defended him from attacks of being “a sissy.”

“Fred is one of the strongest people I have ever met in my life,” Daly said. “So if they are saying he’s gay because … that’s a surrogate for saying he’s weak, that’s not right, because he’s incredibly strong.”

Daly added: “He wasn’t a very masculine person, he wasn’t a very feminine person; he was androgynous.”

It’s not known if and how the upcoming feature film about Rogers, starring Tom Hanks, will address the TV icon’s sexuality. The film, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” is slated for release in October.

Long — who wrote another 2015 book on Rogers, “Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers” — said in his essay for the Huffington Post that it’s not likely that Rogers acted on any attraction to men.

“There’s no publicly available evidence that Rogers ever engaged in gay sex,” Long wrote in his essay. Meanwhile, Rogers was married to one woman, Joanne, for almost all his adult life. Rogers died in 2003, after winding up 31 seasons of his show in 2001.

“Their relationship, by all accounts, was a loving and devoted one,” Long added. Fred and Joanne Rogers were parents of two sons.

Long explained that acting on gay or bisexual tendencies would have been a complicated matter for Rogers given the times he lived in.

Rogers might have been revered for advocating for progressive views on child development, race relations and other cultural issues. But in other ways his high-profile career in public television made it difficult for him to publicly stray too far from generally accepted, post-World War II ideas about family, gender and sexuality, Long and others said.

That perhaps explains why Rogers strongly discouraged his gay co-star Clemmons from coming out in the late 1960s.

In “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and in interviews with Long, Clemmons described how Rogers confronted him about being gay. Clemmons said Rogers told him it didn’t personally matter to him that he was homosexual. But his boss also told him he couldn’t be on the show if he came out.

“It’s not an issue for me. I don’t think you’re less of a person. I don’t think you’re immoral,” Clemmons said Rogers told him, according to Long’s book.

“People must not know,” Rogers reportedly told Clemmons. “Many of the wrong people will get the worst idea, and we don’t want them thinking and talking about you like that. If those people put up enough fuss, then I couldn’t have you on the program.”

Rogers encouraged Clemmons to marry a woman, which Clemmons did, only to divorce her six years later.

But Rogers later revised his advice to Clemmons, as countless men and women came out following the Stonewall uprising, Long wrote in his Huffington Post essay. Rogers also urged Clemmons, who became a lifelong friend, to enter into a long-term and stable gay relationship.

Moreover, Rogers welcomed Clemmons’ gay friends whenever they visited the TV set in Pittsburgh, Pa., and he supported a gay-friendly church in the city, where he made many friends, Long added.

At the same time, Rogers rejected Clemmons’ idea of coming out as gay on the show, and Rogers never became a public advocate for gay rights, Long and others wrote.

So, it’s not known whether Rogers’ private friendship with gay people says anything about his own sexuality. But Long rejected the idea that it’s necessary to know for sure and wondered if some people’s curiosity stems from deep-seated prejudices.

Bottom line, according to Long, is that Rogers advocated for a queer- and straight-friendly message of unconditional acceptance of other people throughout his TV career.

Rogers’ message was “I like you just the way you are,” which is “arguably the most positive and compassionate message that any gay child, youth, or adult could find anywhere on television,” Long concluded.