The Top 15 Favorite Gay Reality Stars

What are you doing now? I recently moved back to Atlanta for a job at a NYC publishing company and to be closer to my family after 10 years of living in Seattle and New York. I love being close to family again but being back in the South is a jolting awakening after being away for so long! It’s like going back to dial-up after being on high-speed Internet for years. There are so many social problems and I’m currently getting involved in different causes to work towards a more sustainable future here. Atlanta, the capital of the new south, is a very shortsighted city and there’s plenty of work to be done. I’m also settling into a new life with a new love now after a long road of healing from my past break-up. Learning to love again is a very difficult but amazing part of life that I am very grateful for.

Your reaction to being named our reader's #1 favorite gay reality star? It’s the most flattering honor I’ve ever received and I’m still in a bit of denial. I know most younger people today don’t remember Pedro, but what he did was revolutionary and selfless so I have to share the honor with him. He was making an effort to make a difference and I was just being filmed. There’s a huge difference there. But thank you all so much!

# 2 Pedro Zamora
Appeared on: The Real World: San Francisco (1994)

It’s hard to overstate the impact Pedro Zamora had on the American cultural landscape when he first appeared on television. It was 1994 and the AIDS epidemic still ravaged the gay community in America and Europe while fueling homophobia across the world. Then this twenty-two-year-old Cuban-American put a face to the disease as he spoke out eloquently about being a gay man and living with HIV. As if being openly gay and an AIDS educator wasn’t groundbreaking enough, Zamora also allowed the world to watch as he fell in love with Sean Sasser and the two were even married on air.

President Bill Clinton spoke with Zamora in the weeks before his death on November 11^th, 1994, the day after the final episode of The Real World: San Francisco aired. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say his death was a devastating blow for the gay community.

In fact, Zamora’s short life was so inspiring that on April 1^st MTV is releasing Pedro, a movie written by Dustin Lance Black, about Zamora’s too short life.

#3 Ronnie Kroell
Appeared on: Make Me a Supermodel (2008)

Photo credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images

When one thinks of Ronnie Kroell, the runner-up in the first season of Bravo’s MMAS, it’s almost impossible to not also think of fellow contestant Ben DiChiara. Together Ronnie and Ben became better known as Bronnie, one of the most popular gay/straight bromances in television history. Kroell, twenty-five, and DiChiara, twenty-three, had an undeniable chemistry together even though DeChiara was straight but definitely not narrow.