Billy Porter plays Pray Tell on Pose, a character who is HIV+. The actor recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter and shared with them that he was diagnosed with it in 2007.
It was the worst year of his life. It started out with him being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and then he filed bankruptcy papers. If that was not enough, he developed a pimple on his butt that would not go away. In June, he went to the doctor to have it checked out, and they asked him if he wanted to take an HIV+ test. He agreed to do it because he did it every six months. However, this time the results were different. This time he was positive.
Although the stigma about HIV/AIDS had changed a lot by then, he remembered what it was like when he came out when he was 16. Back then, people shunned anyone who tested positive for the disease. Therefore, he has only told a few people in 17 years.
One of the people he didn’t tell was his mom. He thought she would go to her grave without knowing. Then on the last week of filming Pose, he finally told her. She was like, why didn’t you tell me earlier?
That is what a lot of people are going to tell him today. But I understand where he is coming from. I was an AIDS activist, and there was a stigma towards people who had it. So they opted to keep their diagnosis secret just like they had kept the fact that they were Gay hidden.
That was then; this is now. Porter’s generation broke down the barriers so the younger generations would not have to go through what he went through as a Gay man. And now he is doing the same for people who are HIV+.
HIV is no longer a death sentence. But there are still ways to prevent getting. There are more options than then there were in the ’80s and 2007. Therefore if you have sex with someone new, get tested, use condoms, and take PrEP if your lover is positive and you are not.
