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Zachary Quinto clarifies his stance on HIV

Zachary Quinto clarifies his stance on HIV
Zachary Quinto
Zachary Quinto

Last year, actor Zachary Quinto ruffled some feathers with criticisms he made about gay man, HIV, and PrEP.

Talking about the uptick in gay men using PrEP and Truvada in lieu of condoms to protect against HIV, he controversially said, “I think there’s a tremendous sense of complacency in the LGBT community. AIDS has lost the edge of horror it possessed when it swept through the world in the ’80s. Today’s generation sees it more as something to live with and something to be much less fearful of, and that comes with a sense of – dare I say – laziness.”

In a recent interview with Huffington Post, Quinto tried to clarify those initial comments, claiming he knows “tons of people who are taking [PrEP] and using it,” because it’s “a thing to do now,” though “it’s not for me.”

“Look, I just think we need to be vigilant as a community and a community of gay men. It was not my intention to judge anybody or to rankle anybody, or to put myself in some kind of superior position by any means. I think if people use PrEP as part of a responsible regimen of taking care of themselves and preserving their bodies and their well-being and the well-being of the people they’re having sex with, then more power to them. There was this thing that I was ‘slut-shaming.’ Anybody who knows me knows that that is the last thing I would ever do. I just think that we can’t let our guard down.”

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