theFeed one to go and be a boy with. I was just vulnerable. He got in a few slaps, some tough love, a good spanking. But I was not kicked out of the family.” Rogers reportedly told Clemmons: “The world doesn’t really want to know who you’re sleeping with — especially if it’s a man. You can have it all if you can keep that part out of the limelight.” Rogers then said: “Have you ever thought of getting married? People do make some compromises in life.” “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.” He and Sheridan later divorced in 1974 and he began living life as an openly gay man. He says he holds no animosity towards Rogers. “Lord have mercy, yes, I forgive him,” Clemmons told People. “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.” l
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD
Rogers say, ‘I love you,'” Clemmons said. “When I was growing up, men were rough and macho — you had to be a ‘man.’ I didn’t fit any of that.” But Clemmons also recalled being called into Rogers’ office at the studio after Rogers found out about his sexual orientation. “Franc, you have talents and gifts that set you apart and above the crowd,” Rogers told Clemmons, according to the 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.” Clemmons told People he began to sob. “I could have his friendship and fatherly love and relationship forever,” he said. “But I could have the job only if I stayed in the closet. “I was destroyed,” he added. “The man who was killing me had also saved me. He was my executioner and deliverer. But, at the same time, I knew that he would know how to comfort me. I didn’t have another mother or father to comfort me. I had no
Troubling Precedent Turkey’s president defends religious leader who said homosexuality “brings illnesses” and “corrupts generations.” By Rhuaridh Marr
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URKISH PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN HAS defended a religious leader who said that homosexuality “brings illnesses,” and called criticism of the cleric an “attack on the state.”Ali Erbas, president of the state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs, claimed last week that homosexuality causes disease, corruption, and is condemned in Islam during a weekly sermon. The Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, trains Turkey’s imams, provides Quranic education to children, and 20
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prepares a weekly sermon delivered in Turkey’s 85,000 mosques. During his sermon on Friday, April, 24, Erbas said that homosexuality “brings illnesses and corrupts generations,” according to Reuters, and said that it causes HIV. “Come and let’s fight together to protect people from such evil,” Erbas urged. Erbas’ comments were criticized by lawyer’s group the Ankara Bar Association, which said they could lead to hate crimes against LGBTQ people and that his comments “came
