Gay online soap opera has a serious message

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Shawn, a friend, wakes Edgar with a gentle kick. He explains, when it's clear Edgar does not remember, that Edgar brought a date home from a party, then chased him off before passing out in the courtyard.


What happened?" Shawn asks.

Edgar is in a fog:

"I just. . . ."

"Whore," says Shawn.

"Jealous?" asks Edgar.

From its opening scene, the online soap opera "In the Moment" pulls no punches -- because, its creators say, it cannot. The show, which has drawn tens of thousands of viewers in the last few months, is a racy, unvarnished portrait of gay L.A.

It is also, at its core, about HIV and AIDS.

Recent years have brought a wave of new programs designed to reinvigorate outreach in the gay community, as well as a dialogue about men's sexuality.

There are colorful trucks that take rapid-response HIV testing to the streets. Government-funded "POLs" -- popular opinion leaders -- scour the town for other socially influential gay men and women, give them risk-reduction training and send them back into the community to spread the word. There's even a proposal to design jeans with built-in "condom pockets" to promote the idea that condom use should be a routine part of gay culture, not an afterthought.

But more than anything, said Susan R. Cohen, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's director of health education and prevention, "we needed to be where the guys are" -- on the Internet.

Cohen arrived on the job a year and a half ago; her first order of business was to revamp an outreach program that was still relying largely on "rap groups" to which educators dispensed condoms and safe-sex advice, sometimes with an audience of as few as two or three men. Among other changes, Cohen greenlighted a proposal to film "webisodes" of a drama set in West Hollywood. The city of West Hollywood covered most production costs.


Gay online soap opera has a serious message
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