Out actor Daniel Franzese on Monday came to the defense of former child star Danny Pintauro.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Pintauro, who came out in 1997 after the National Enquirer threatened to reveal his sexuality, announced that he's been living with HIV for 12 years. The one-time Who's the Boss? star blamed a crystal meth addiction at the time for “taking away his inhibitions.”

Franzese, who plays an HIV-positive character on HBO's Looking, said that Pintauro's message got “derailed” in an interview with The View.

“His interviewers on The View – fellow child stars Raven Symone and Candace Cameron – ask him some personal questions that he's not prepared to answer and all involved stumbled over some incorrect terminology when discussing HIV,” Franzese wrote. “Many watching the interview feel Danny was shamed by his interviewers.”

“First people jump on The View hosts for shaming Danny, then some LGBT thought leaders direct their feelings of anger and disappointment at Danny himself. My beef is that these leaders write about ending stigma, but instead of writing a private note to Danny offering to advise him, they instead criticize him publicly. Why would anyone with HIV want to come out publicly if that is the consequence?”

Franzese linked his column to a widely-publicized Huffington Post story titled The Problematic Case of Danny Pintauro, in which Ken Schneck, PhD criticized Pintauro for stating in an US Weekly interview that he contracted HIV through oral sex and calling the lifestyle of the man from whom he contracted HIV “really irresponsible”

“By going out of his way to link his HIV transmission to oral sex, Pintauro has muddied the overall issue of how we talk about HIV/AIDS via a more palatable transmission method,” Schneck wrote. “It would have been one thing if he was suddenly putting himself forward as the poster-child for the dangers of oral sex, which aren't currently part of the health class curriculum. Instead, he did the opposite, minimizing this detail with the horrid summary statement of "it's that easy." It only served to add insult to injury that he then went on in the interview to cast the man who gave him HIV in such a shameful light.”

Franzese said that Pintauro should be commended for “committing himself to being a beacon of light in the dark world of meth use.”

“I urge us all to think before we criticize someone who has good intentions and who gives a voice to an underrepresented community,” Franzese wrote.