"Both the book and the film work hard to adjust the notion that [Fred] Rogers was... 'a two-dimensional milquetoast who spoke in warm bromides.'"

"In this endeavor [Maxwell King, in "The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers,"] seems obsessed with Rogers’s sexuality—though to be fair, a lot of people are, with the apparent exception of his wife, Joanne, to whom he was married for fifty years. King seems to almost reluctantly settle on 'androgynous' when he might have just left it with what Rogers told a friend: 'Well, you know, I must be right smack in the middle. Because I have found women attractive, and I have found men attractive.' This would satisfy a preschooler but is too loose for King, who treats his subject’s sex life as if he were conducting a police investigation: 'There was no double life. And without exception, close associates concluded that Fred Rogers was absolutely faithful to his marriage vows.'...  [In the film 'Won't You Be My Neighbor'], François Clemmons, the opera singer who played Officer Clemmons on the show, testifies that, as a gay man, he would have known if Fred Rogers was gay: 'I spent enough time with him that if there was a gay vibe I would have picked it up.' This statement turns out to be complicated by the fact that Rogers initially asked Clemmons to hide his sexuality for fear of scaring sponsors, and encouraged him to marry (which he did).... 'I’m thinking about many different ways of saying I love you,' Rogers tells Clemmons in [one] episode. 'You’ll find many ways to understand what love is,' Clemmons sings. Rogers then notes the way memories are called up by actions, like being in a pool. At the show’s close, Clemmons returns to sing a spiritual, with Rogers beaming. 'I’m so proud of you, François!' Rogers says at one point. It’s hard not to see it as an apology."

From "The Ministry of Mr. Rogers" (The New York Review of Books).