Posted: 09/07/2009

Pedro

by Sawyer J. Lahr

Dustin Lance Black writes another Oscar-worthy script about another gay hero Pedro Zamora played by Alex Loynaz with co-star Justina Machado (Six Feet Under) as the stubborn sister who nurses Pedro to his last days.

On The Real World San Francisco (1994), Pedro was the first openly HIV Positive person on television. He went into the show with the intention of using the show to humanize the illness. To avoid the drama at the house with some of the roommates who just didn’t want to understand, Pedro escaped the cameras to be with his black boyfriend Sean Sasser (DaJuan Johnson), also a gay rights activists, whom he met at a march in Washington.

By going public with his HIV status, he tried to communicate the importance of safe sex and regular STD testing to his cuban/latino community. He wanted the public to see how an HIV positive person lives. Despite his worsening condition, he asked that the cameras come to the doctor with him, no matter how bad the news.

Pedro’s relationship to boyfriend’s name is brought to the foreground of the show, and the two get married on television. This is before Rosie O’Donnell and Kelli Carpenter tied the knot outside San Francisco’s City Hall.

While Pedro’s grand plan may seem naive and overly optimistic, he caught the public’s attention, and the backlash he faced put the hatred as much in the spotlight as the disease.

Sawyer J. Lahr is Chief Editor of the forthcoming online publication, Go Over the Rainbow. He also writes a monthly film column for Mindful Metropolis, a conscious living magazine in Chicago, IL.

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