Was the IWTBF video REALLY the deal breaker in the States? That was before my time (I was just a kid at the time).
Here's a view from an American old enough to be aware of what was happenning at the time. . .
The topic of homosexuality in the US at that time did not have the level of attention and awareness it has today in the media. So, it was a BIG deal.
There was a growing awareness here that Freddie was a homosexual and that video served to confirm the horrible suspicions of all the male chauvanist, women-exploiting rock'n roll headbangers who loved it when Queen put posters of nude female bicycle racers in their ablum sleeves.
Right or wrong, stupid or not, most Americans took it as Queen saying "accept THIS". And Rock'n roller Americans took that as a huge insult to their womanizing sensibilities. As long as Queen were doing the naked lady bicycle races body language video stuff, all was well.
At that time of the IWTBF video, I was 16 or 17 and had been a Queen fan since '74. I was usually considered the oddball for being a Queen fan. I couldn't have cared less (and still don't) about Freddies personal tendencies and understood that video was Queen was just being Queen and being very British (didn't anyone here watch Monty Python?!) - but I just KNEW how most people here were going to react to that video. It didn't surprise me. It didn't appear that Queen was hurt by it at all, though.