Former Who’s The Boss? child star Danny Pintauro has been doing the rounds of the TV chat shows and openly talking about his HIV status and his past drug use. He started with Oprah and yesterday he ended up in the couch with The View co-hosts Candace Cameron Bure and Raven Symoné (both of whom are former child stars themselves,) for a very frank discussion. Pintauro, with his husband sitting in the studio audience did not hold back.
Asked by Bure why he decided to reveal his HIV status now, Pintauro said, "Telling your family that you’ve got HIV is hard enough. Telling your friends that you had a meth problem is hard enough. Telling the country–it takes some time." Speaking of his crystal meth use, Pintauro said that his use was intertwined with sex. "As soon as I wanted to explore some rougher sides of my sexuality, I encountered meth…The reason I kept doing it over the years was probably because I had some stuff in my life that I was not ready to deal with."
Pintauro does not have AIDS. He is HIV positive and says he is undetectable, and he wasn't at all phased when Symoné asked Pintauro’s husband if they have unprotected sex. That was a rather innocuous question compared to what Bure had to say about the matter . “I want to know, do you take responsibility for your actions? For being promiscuous, going into a lifestyle of having heightened sex because of the meth that you were using? I want to know what the message is. Because you want to be the face of HIV, to give that a face. But what is the message that you have? What does that mean?”
Pintauros did well and did not respond to such patronizing and high-minded righteous condescension with the anger that has now lit up social media. He simply responded that he absolutely takes responsibility for his actions, and added “I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want to be a role model. I want to be the example.”
Why such ignorant people like Bure are allowed to sit in judgement of others in such an offensive manner and in response like this to someone whose courage in being so honest and open will actually help others in similar circumstances, is beyond me. As long as she remains on The View, it will not remain on my viewing schedule.
