On Monday, Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank announced that he will not seek reelection next year, and American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer decided to celebrate Frank’s retirement by attacking the congressman for being gay. On Focal Point yesterday, Fischer claimed that Frank may have used his prominent position to “influence” other men into becoming gay who may have later contracted AIDS. “This is a dangerous, risky, immoral, unhealthy lifestyle, and Barney Frank has been an open practitioner of a lifestyle that is condemning one young man after another to an early grave,” Fischer said, “this is not somebody to admire, this is not somebody to honor.” Fischer went on to say that Frank “modeled a lifestyle which is really a death-style,” wondering, “Who knows how many people were drawn or encouraged in some way by Barney Frank’s example to dabble in a lifestyle that eventually cost them their health and maybe even cost them their lives.”

Fischer: Barney Frank served seventeen terms in Congress and this is some of the stuff in his background: he was the first openly gay member of Congress – I just saw deal, according to the Centers for Disease Control, sixty-one percent of all of the new HIV/AIDS cases are among men who have sex with men. This is a dangerous, risky, immoral, unhealthy lifestyle, and Barney Frank has been an open practitioner of a lifestyle that is condemning one young man after another to an early grave. This is not somebody to admire, this is not somebody to honor – you’ve got all these left-wing media outlets out there talking about what a colorful figure he was and how important a legislator he was and how he’s going to be missed on the American political scene. And yet he modeled a lifestyle which is really a deathstyle. People imitate that. You have got to know that people are influenced toward that behavior, if they have any kind of inclination in that direction, if there are very prominent people that are engaging in it, they’re doing it openly, they are praised by the press rather than criticized for flaunting this kind of behavior, you’ve got to know that has got an impact. So who knows how many people were sort of drawn or encouraged in some way by Barney Frank’s example to dabble in a lifestyle that eventually cost them their health and maybe even cost them their lives.