&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oriol Gutierrez Jr. HIV: The Marine Who Became a Leading Latino HIV Advocate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-decoration: underline;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.facebook.com/oriolgutierrez&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oriol Gutierrez Jr.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; did not choose to find out he was HIV-positive. He learned through a routine checkup that he was HIV-positive &amp;mdash; the day after his 22nd birthday, in 1992. What he did choose, in the years and decades that followed, was everything else: when to come out as gay, when to disclose his status, and how to spend a life he once believed would be cut short before he turned thirty. That life became one of the most important in Latino HIV journalism and advocacy &amp;ndash; and it is still being lived today.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2014%20%E2%80%93%20Oriol%20Gutierrez%20Jr.%20The%20HIV-Positive%20Marine%20Who%20Became%20Editor%20of%20POZ%20Magazine%20Goodbye%20HIV%2001.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 14 &amp;ndash; Oriol Gutierrez Jr. The HIV-Positive Marine Who Became Editor of POZ Magazine Goodbye HIV 01.jpg (133 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.poz.com/article/oriol-gutierrez-hiv-15299-1378&quot;&gt;Grant Delin / Courtesy of POZ Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Day After His Birthday&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It was the day after his 22nd birthday. Oriol Gutierrez Jr. was serving in the United States Marine Corps Reserve when his commanding officer called him in and delivered news that would change the course of his life.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He had tested positive for HIV.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The year was 1992. At the time, effective combination antiretroviral therapy was not yet available. The treatment revolution that would transform HIV care came in the mid-1990s. Gutierrez spent much of the rest of his twenties believing, with genuine reason, that he would not live to see thirty.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;I got the news that I was living with HIV the day after my 22nd birthday,&quot; he later wrote. &quot;It was 1992, four years before effective treatment arrived. From that point on, I truly believed throughout the rest of my 20s that I wouldn&#39;t live to see my 30th birthday. I&#39;m glad to say that I was wrong.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He was wrong. More than three decades later, Gutierrez has built a distinguished career in journalism, HIV education and advocacy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Born in Spanish Harlem, Raised in Queens&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;Oriol R. Gutierrez Jr. was born in Spanish Harlem and raised in Queens, New York &amp;mdash; a first-generation Cuban-American whose upbringing, by his own description, was sheltered and family-centred. He came out as gay to his best friend during his final year of high school in 1987, delivering the news in a letter tucked into his friend&#39;s knapsack &amp;mdash; he was too afraid, at the time, to say the words out loud.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;It&#39;s OK&quot;, his friend said after a few agonising days.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It would be nearly a decade before Gutierrez felt ready to tell his parents and sister the same truth. He came out to his family in 1996 &amp;ndash; nine years after that first letter and four years after his HIV diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He kept his HIV status private for even longer &amp;mdash; twelve more years, in fact. It was not until 2008, when he joined &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.poz.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-decoration: underline;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POZ magazine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt; as deputy editor and wrote a personal essay for the publication, that he disclosed his status publicly for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;I believed that the news that I was gay would be difficult enough,&quot; he explained in that essay &amp;mdash; a quiet, honest sentence that says more about the compounded stigma facing gay Latino men than any statistic ever could.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;//www.youtube.com/embed/YSNSQjeyMqQ&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; height=&quot;314&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Watch: Oriol Gutierrez speaks on behalf of POZ Magazine at the 2009 National Equality March in Washington, D.C., calling for healthcare reform and ending HIV stigma through open disclosure.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coming Out Twice, Finding His Voice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;The experience of coming out twice &amp;mdash; first as gay, then as HIV-positive &amp;mdash; to a Latino family is not unique to Oriol Gutierrez.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Gutierrez has spoken and written about how concerns about family attitudes toward homosexuality and HIV shaped his own decisions about disclosure. The stigma around HIV &amp;mdash; often entangled with assumptions about sexuality and morality &amp;mdash; can feel even heavier. For many gay Latino men, the idea of disclosing an HIV-positive status to family carries the weight of both conversations at once.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That is precisely why Gutierrez&#39;s decision to go public in 2008 and to build much of his subsequent career around HIV education and advocacy for Latino communities matters so much. He did not just come out &amp;mdash; he went to work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From Marine to Editor-in-Chief&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;Before joining POZ, Gutierrez had built a notable journalism career. He graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a Master of Science in publishing. He worked as managing editor of DiversityInc, the leading source for diversity management. He co-founded, published, and edited LGNY Latino, a bilingual Spanish-English LGBT periodical. He served as vice president of print and new media for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;POZ is a longstanding HIV/AIDS publication providing news, treatment information, personal stories, forums, and community resources. For someone living with HIV in America &amp;ndash; particularly someone who is Latino or gay or both &amp;ndash; POZ has long been an important source of information, connection, and community for people affected by HIV.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Gutierrez also took on the role of editor-in-chief of Tu Salud, a trusted guide to Latino health, extending his reach into a community where HIV information in Spanish remains critically important.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2014%20%E2%80%93%20Oriol%20Gutierrez%20Jr.%20The%20HIV-Positive%20Marine%20Who%20Became%20Editor%20of%20POZ%20Magazine%20Goodbye%20HIV%2003.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 14 &amp;ndash; Oriol Gutierrez Jr. The HIV-Positive Marine Who Became Editor of POZ Magazine Goodbye HIV 03.jpg (73 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.poz.com/article/editor-letter-january-february-2016-28192-9440&quot;&gt;Grant Delin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why His Work Matters&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Gutierrez did not take the helm of POZ simply to tell his own story. He took it to tell the story of a community that was being left behind by the broader HIV conversation.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Late testing means late treatment. Late treatment means worse outcomes. And late testing, Gutierrez has argued consistently, is directly connected to stigma.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;If Latinos are late testers, what does that say about the stigma in the Latino community about knowing your status?&quot; he has asked &amp;ndash; not as a rhetorical flourish, but as a genuine challenge to his community to confront something uncomfortable and life-threatening.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His answer, lived out across his career, has been journalism, education, and visibility. The simple, radical act of a gay, HIV-positive Cuban-American man showing up in public, doing important work, and refusing to disappear.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2014%20%E2%80%93%20Oriol%20Gutierrez%20Jr.%20The%20HIV-Positive%20Marine%20Who%20Became%20Editor%20of%20POZ%20Magazine%20Goodbye%20HIV%2004.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 14 &amp;ndash; Oriol Gutierrez Jr. The HIV-Positive Marine Who Became Editor of POZ Magazine Goodbye HIV 04.jpg (119 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://x.com/oriolgutierrez&quot;&gt;Oriol Gutierrez Jr. / @oriolgutierrez via X&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Still Here. Still Writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;Oriol Gutierrez has now been living with HIV for more than three decades. He has outlived the prognosis that haunted him through his twenties. He has built a career of genuine distinction &amp;mdash; as a journalist, an editor, an advocate, and a voice for communities that too often go unheard.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He continues to share his story through his writing for POZ, reflecting on the years he spent navigating the HIV epidemic, the joy he found in New York&#39;s queer spaces during some of its darkest years, and what it meant to survive when so many others did not.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His story is not simply about living with HIV for more than three decades. It is also about finding community, holding on to joy, and using his own experience to help others feel less alone.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That is not a small thing to say. During the early years of the HIV epidemic, joy was a form of resistance. Community was a form of medicine. And telling the truth &amp;mdash; about your status, your identity, your fear, and your survival &amp;mdash; was one of the most courageous things a person could do.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Oriol Gutierrez has been telling that truth for a very long time. His voice has helped make the Latino community &amp;mdash; and the broader HIV community &amp;mdash; better informed and better heard.&lt;/p&gt;

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