He helped move gay rights to the center of American politics and put his long friendship with Bill Clinton on the line over “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
David Mixner, a political strategist who helped move gay rights to the center of American politics and put his long friendship with Bill Clinton on the line over the president’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay people from serving openly in the military, died March 11 at his home in Manhattan. He was 77.Mr. Mixner, a farmer’s son from rural New Jersey, lived until he was 30 as a closeted gay person who considered his sexuality a “terrible secret.
Mr. Mixner “was an important role model for a lot of gay activists … because he was one of the first who was willing to come out,” said, the author of the book “The Gay Metropolis,” a history of gay life in the United States. “It was in a period when whatever your profession was … you mostly assumed that if you came out of the closet it would have a terrible destructive effect on your career.”A skilled strategist and prolific fundraiser, Mr.
Clinton, with guidance from Mr. Mixner, made an unprecedented appeal to gay voters by a major presidential nominee. At a gathering in Los Angeles, he declared to them, “I have a vision of America, and you are part of it.” He pledged to devote federal dollars to HIV/AIDS research, to appoint gay people to prominent government positions and to end the long-standing ban on gays serving openly in the military.with raising $3.4 million for the 1992 Clinton campaign.
David Benjamin Mixner, the youngest of three children, was born in Bridgeton, N.J., on Aug. 16, 1946, and grew up in nearby Elmer. His father did agricultural work but never owned a farm. His mother was a homemaker, a notary and a bookkeeper for a John Deere farm-equipment dealership. A brother is Mr. Mixner’s only immediate survivor.In a memoir, “Stranger Among Friends” , Mr. Mixner described his parents as liberal in many of their beliefs but unaccepting of homosexuality.
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