According to Officer Clemmons, the Closet Was Alive & Well in 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood'

The closet was alive and well in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," at least according to Francois Clemmons, who was featured on the popular children's program as Officer Clemmons.

In his upcoming autobiography "Officer Clemmons," due out May 5, he relates an incident when he was called into Fred Roger's office sometime in the late 1960s, People magazine reports.

"Franc, you have talents and gifts that set you apart and above the crowd," Rogers told him, Clemmons writes in his memoir. "Someone has informed us that you were seen at the local gay bar downtown. Now, I want you to know, Franc, that if you're gay, it doesn't matter to me at all. Whatever you say and do is fine with me, but if you're going to be on the show as an important member of the Neighborhood, you can't be out as gay."

He then told People he began to cry.

"I could have his friendship and fatherly love and relationship forever," Clemmons remembers today. "But I could have the job only if I stayed in the closet."

"You must do this Francois,' Rogers told him, "because it threatens my dream."

'The world doesn't really want to know who you're sleeping with – especially if it's a man, " Clemmons says Rogers told him. " You can have it all if you can keep that part out of the limelight."

Rogers suggested Clemmons marry.

"People do make some compromises in life," he told him.

"By the time I left his office," Clemmons writes in his memoir, "I had made up my mind to marry La-Tanya Mae Sheridan. At the wedding reception, Fred and Joanne approached me and my new wife. It felt as if Fred and I were sealing some kind of secret bargain."

Clemmons was married to Sheridan until 1974 when he began his life as an openly gay man.

Asked if he forgave him, Clemmons answered he did.

"More than that, I understand. I relied on the fact that this was his dream. He had worked so hard for it. I knew 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' was his whole life."

"While assuring Clemmons it was okay to be gay privately, he steadfastly refused to depict any hint of gay sexuality onscreen," wrote Michael Long is biography of Rogers, Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers." In the late 1970s, Clemmons began to wear an earring in his left ear, code, he recalls, meant that he way gay.

But Rogers wasn't okay with it and insisted Clemmons remove it when filming. That, though, may not have been enough for Rogers. "I was aware (the camera operators) often filmed me on the right side because my left side was pierced," he told Long.

And Rogers was supportive of LGBTQ rights as a member of Pittsburgh Sixth Presbyterian Church, which he and his wife joined in the early 1970s, he offered quiet support. "He was not a loud crusader for LGBT rights either in or beyond Sixth Church," writes Long. "Rogers was concerned that if he became widely identified as a crusader for gay rights, the program would suffer in its ability to reach as many children as possible."

During the 1990s, Rogers became close friends with LGBTQ members of his congregation, his public attitude seemed at odds with his credo. "Although his teaching of radical acceptance – 'I like you just the way you are' – no doubt gave heart to many gays and lesbians, Rogers never made public comments about homosexuality or gay rights," writes Long. "The support he offered to gay friends and to the gay-friendly ministry at Sixth Church was typically quiet, exactly what one would expect from Fred Rogers. His quietist approach to homosexuality and gay rights meant that Rogers' Neighborhood was never entirely exclusive and that the peace of the Neighborhood was not as deep and wide as it might have been."