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"Big Brother" Winner Comes Out As HIV-Positive: Today In Gay

Donato, 51, opened up about his status to People, saying "I spent a lot of time trying to figure out my next steps – the right doctors and medications. I really began to understand how frustrating it could be."

He was first diagnosed in 2011 while competing on Big Brother Season 13, which saw former Housemates returning to the show.

"They told me that something was wrong with my blood test," he says. "They had done two HIV tests. One had come back positive and the other had come back negative."

The show's doctor took more blood. Two hours later, Donato learned the life-changing news. "When they told me, I just went numb," he says.

With little explanation, Donato left the show. "They had a car take me from CBS to my mother's house. She was the first person I told."

His biggest fear was telling girlfriend Stephanie Rogness-Fischer, who will appear on VH1's Couples Therapy with him. "She was really understanding about the whole thing," he says. She said, 'Whatever happens, we'll face it together.' She was tested and it came back negative. It was an incredible relief."

Donato's viral load is currently undetectable, but he says knows the stigma around the virus is still devastating.

"People are going to make assumptions about how I got it, and that's okay," he says. "People are afraid to come forward because they're afraid of the stigma of HIV. I'm not gay and I've never stuck a needle in my arm, but at this point, it doesn't matter. We create a stigma around the disease that makes it hard for people to publicly say they have it."


Last year Sweet Cakes by Melissa owners Melissa and Aaron Klein turned away a lesbian couple and found themselves hit with a civil-rights violation. They closed up shop rather than welcome LGBT customers, a decision that apparently gives Melissa the feels.

Recalling how she'd work with nice, traditional heterosexual couples, she said, that "when I would sit down with them I just would want to know everything about her wedding. I'd want to know about the flowers, her dress, the centerpieces, her colors, the way her hair is going to be. I would even want to talk about 'where are you going on your honeymoon?'"

And presumably what sexual acts you will be performing? (Can't make cakes for Sodomites, right?)


Craig argued he was entitled to use the funds because was traveling on Senate business at the time of his arrest.

But U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wasn't buying it, declaring that his legal fees were "a personal matter that was not connected to the Senator’s duties as an officeholder."


“A child, who has a mother in Russia, has illegally been placed under guardianship, and the boy has been handed over to a US gay couple,” said Russia’s children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov.

Russian government spokesperson Konstantin Dolgov called the placement "unacceptable," and insisted Russian schoolchildren were being "subjected to the legislature of American states, where minors were able to choose on their own, and without their parents’ permission, their place for living or being adopted."

More than 70,000 students from former Soviet countries had applied for the program this year alone.

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