Billy Porter and his husband Adam Smith recently walked the red carpet!

On Sunday (September 19), the couple was seen posing together at The Event Deck at L.A. Live in Los Angeles for the 2021 Emmy Awards.

The 51-year-old Pose actor wore an Ashi Studio ensemble that included dramatic sculptural wings, a diamond and emerald necklace, and platform black boots. He completed the ensemble with a gleaming green clutch.

Adam wore a sparkling black suit jacket with matching pants and a bow tie, and he looked dapper.

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Billy Porter says disclosing HIV status Has Been ‘Freeing’

CREDIT: RICH FURY/GETTY

Billy Porter is still in high spirits since disclosing his HIV diagnosis.

The 51-year-old, who was honored at The Elizabeth Taylor Ball to End Aids event on Friday in West Hollywood, revealed his HIV diagnosis in May after concealing it for 14 years.

Billy Porter’s decision to tell the world about his HIV status has had a positive impact on his life. The Emmy-nominated Pose actor told People magazine, “There is a shame component with being Black, with being queer, with having HIV that is silencing and destructive. I  am no more silenced, I am no more shamed and I’m ready for whatever comes next.”

In the months since his disclosure, the 2021 Emmy nominee said he’s received “wonderful feedback” from many individuals who were “uplifted” by his story and “felt seen because of it”

“I think it’s important that those of us who have a platform use our platforms in ways that move difficult conversations forward and that can be transformative in some way and make a change, make a difference,” Porter continued.

Porter’s upcoming memoir “Unprotected: A Memoir,” which he says “is about healing trauma through my art” will take on a similar tone.

Porter has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series for playing Pose’s leading character. It’s his third year in a row that he’s been nominated for this position, having previously won the award in the inaugural season of the event in 2018.

In the heart of one of the worst periods in American history, Elizabeth Taylor “taught us all how to love unconditionally in the middle of one of the darkest times in American history. It is a profound and humbling honor to be here and to be recognized and to have my voice and my name mentioned in the same breath as the other honorees this evening. It’s profound, and it’s emotional.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci of amFAR and Sandra Thurman of the National AIDS Policy Institute also received the Elizabeth Taylor Commitment to End AIDS award.

Elizabeth Taylor, a star of the Golden Age of Hollywood, founded The Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation in 1991 and left a remarkable humanitarian legacy in addition to her cinematic career.

During his speech at the fundraiser, Porter told the audience: “I came out in 1985. It was at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. We’ve been fighting for our lives ever since, and I am proud to stand here, but I will say that in 2007, I had a secret—a secret that was so shameful that I held it in for 14 years. I had all the information, I was supposed to know better and I got this anyway. But let me explain to you that shame, shame, my darling, shame is a silent killer. And I ain’t going out like that. Make no mistake. There is a war going on. We are at war for not only the soul of our nation but the soul of humanity itself. I am honored, and I am humbled to be in the presence of all you warriors, and I promise to be a warrior in the fight to end AIDS for as long as I have breath in my body.”

Billy described 2007 as “the worst year of my life” in his article for The Hollywood Reporter, as his career stalled, he filed bankruptcy, and he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in March and HIV positive in June.

“I was the generation that was supposed to know better, and it happened anyway,” Porter wrote. “I was on the precipice of obscurity for about a decade or so, but 2007 was the worst of it. By February, I had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. By March, I signed bankruptcy papers. And by June, I was diagnosed HIV-positive.”

He told ‘everybody who needed to know’ about his situation, but he kept it mainly secret out of fear of increased prejudice, and he didn’t tell his mother about his diagnosis.

“I was trying to have a life and a career,” he said in the article, “and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew. It would just be another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession.”

Porter said he wanted to stay as far away from worrying about being HIV positive as possible. “I tried to block it out. But quarantine [for COVID-19] has taught me a lot. Everybody was required to sit down and shut the f— up.”