{"id":23618,"date":"2021-05-19T17:59:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T17:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=23618"},"modified":"2021-05-20T14:05:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T14:05:23","slug":"billy-porter-hiv","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/billy-porter-hiv\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Porter Opens Up About Being HIV-Positive"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Billy
Billy Porter (Photo: Santiago Felipe\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

14 years after his diagnosis, Billy Porter<\/a> is sharing an intimate part of his life with the world. The 51-year-old opened up in a candid interview in which he explained that he was first diagnosed as HIV positive in 2007. Porter kept his status from his mother as well as his team on the Emmy-winning <\/a><\/span>FX<\/span> drama, <\/span>Pose<\/span><\/i><\/a>. The Tony Award-winning actor plays Pray Tell, an HIV-positive pillar of the queer New York City ballroom scene throughout the late 80s and early 90s in the hit series. \u201cThere has never been a moment that I\u2019ve not been in trauma, which is what I\u2019ve discovered this last year. And it was my engine for a very long time. My trauma served me, my story has served me, in terms of forward motion,\u201d Porter tells The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Porter spent a lot of time navigating his trauma and the shame he says he connected to his sexuality and ultimate diagnosis. He grew up in the church, which had very homophobic beliefs, even noting that they said: \u201cHIV was God\u2019s way of punishing gay people.\u201d To shield his elderly mother from the kind of “persecution by her religious community because of [his] queerness” she’d experienced in the past, he initially decided he’d never tell her about his status. But because of the pandemic, he decided that it was finally time to share this part of his life with his mother.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A post shared by Hollywood Reporter (@hollywoodreporter)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n