Longtime HIV/AIDS Activist Rev. Stephen Pieters, Who Was Portrayed In “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye,” Passes Away At Age 70
Rev. Stephen Pieters has passed away. He was a prominent HIV/AIDS campaigner and survivor whose 1985 television interview with Tammy Faye Bakker made him a household name in the fight against the disease. He was 70. After being admitted to the hospital two weeks prior with an infection, Pieters passed away on Saturday in Los Angeles, according to publicist Harlan Boll. When Pieters appeared via satellite on the Bakker-hosted Tammy’s House Party, which was broadcast on the PTL Network and watched by millions of evangelical Christians throughout the southeastern United States, he had already received diagnoses for AIDS-related complicated in 1982, Kaposi sarcoma, and Stage 4 lymphoma in 1984. Pieters told People magazine two years ago, “She wanted to be the first televangelist to interview a gay man with AIDS. It was a really frightening time, and there was still a lot of stigma surrounding AIDS and being around an AIDS patient. And I believed the chance to connect with a group of...