David Mixner On The Clintons, HRC, Outing and Obama

In The Mixner

mixnerglaad1.jpg

David Mixner’s been in the political fray for over forty years, since Martin Luther King inspired the burgeoning activist’s social responsbility.

In the years that followed, Mixner fought battles great and small, worked inside campaigns, got arrested protesting unjust wars, joined the McGovern Commission – which rewrote the Democratic party’s rules – and would later rally gays around his old friend Bill Clinton, whom Mixner met while crusading against the Vietnam War. Mixner went on to join Clinton’s campaign and became the first openly gay man actively – and very publicly – involved in a presidential election.

Those were optimistic times, but Clinton would later break with Mixner by signing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which prohibits openly gay soldiers from serving in the military. Furious over Clinton’s apparent betrayal, Mixner came out against the discriminatory policy, a move which ended up getting him booted from the inner circle. Of course, Mixner’s always been more comfortable on the outside. In fact, he describes himself as “the best outsider on the inside.”

Now, as we charge toward November, Mixner’s hoping to bring the gays to another Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. During a recent conference call with the Senator’s campaign, Mixner invoked the Clinton campaign, saying:

[This is] probably for the first time since the 1992 convention, we have an extraordinary opportunity to make history as a community. We have four months to do it, so we must gather and unite in our opposition to McCain and in an opportunity to really create something special in this country – not only for the country, but for ourselves and future generations of LGBT people.

Considering Mixner’s mixed career, editor Andrew Belonsky chose to start this interview on a decidedly untraditional note…

Andrew Belonsky: When was the last time you cried, David Mixner?

David Mixner: Um, outside Gone with the Wind. [Laughs.] No. Well, I think the World Trade Center was the last time.

AB: You’re not a big crier?

DM: I used to be, but you ran out of tears during the AIDS epidemic. I lost over 200, near 300 friends. You just learn to give the British stiff upper lip; otherwise you would have been crying day in and day out. You just had to get on with life. Also, my friends who were sick needed me to be strong. I certainly cried when my partner died. I cried when certain friends died and I used to cry all the time, but we just had to be strong. And we were.

AB: How long did it take you to get over your lover Peter Scott’s death? Or have you not?

DM: No. You never get over that kind of thing. What we went through was in itself a horror. To look back and realize that in two years I did 90 eulogies for men under 40. It seems incomprehensible and it almost seems as if I’m looking at someone else back there. To get old – I’m 62 – older and not have peers to share a path with, to laugh about stories – it’s very tough. I talk to a lot of gay men who are survivors like myself and I find that they’re going through the same thing. It’s an extremely lonely existence, as you get older to realize that the people with whom we’d normally be doing things are no longer here.

AB: Are you a religious person?

DM: I am very spiritual, although I don’t practice any organized religion right now, but I believe in God and I pray and it’s a key part of my life and it’s been a source of great strength for me.

AB: Do you believe in hell?

DM: Oh, hell no! I believe in the goodness of man and I believe in a benevolent God. I count myself as a liberation theologist, as a person who believes that spirituality and religion are meant to be used as a force of good to create change, to better the life of people, to practice the principles in the sermon of the mount: to love your neighbor, to help your neighbor and all of those things.

AB: Let’s switch gears and talk about one of our favorite subjects: politics. You originally supported Democrat John Edwards, particularly because of his opposition stance on the war. So, if Hillary Clinton had not supported the war, would you have supported her?

DM: Most likely – out of friendship and our long history, but the war was a deciding issue. You know, I’ve supported the Clintons in every election since 1974, when Bill ran a losing campaign for Congress. This was the first election in which I have not supported a Clinton. I supported her in both her Senate races and so I would probably view it as a very difficult decision had she been a strong opponent of the war.

AB: And there are no hurt feelings between you guys?

DM: Well, you’d have to ask her that. I certainly have a great deal of admiration and certainly after her speech at the end of the campaign, which I thought was one of the finest political speeches I’ve ever heard. Whether they have hurt feelings, there are all sorts of rumors, so I don’t know.

AB: How are you feeling about the Obama campaign?

DM: Well, you know, one of the joys of this campaign is that I had to make a decision not to support Senator Clinton, then I supported John Edwards and I ended up with Obama and I have become a real huge Obama fan in the process, which sort of caught me by surprise. I think he’s a breath of fresh air and will provide a clear choice in November – just on so many things, whether it’s LGBT issues or the war. It’s between the future and the past. It’s just such a clear-cut decision for the people of this country. Obama reminds me – and I know this is a cliché, but I was alive, so I get to say it, and he was my hero – of John Kennedy: the broad sweep on policy and delegating the specifics to others and the unbelievable ability to inspire and make people believe again. And, God, it’s great to see!

congressclouds.jpg

AB: I know that you started – well, obviously you’re a big grass roots organizer and you never really abandoned that mission, but you’ve also worked within campaigns, you worked with Eugene McCarthy and all that. So, I want you thoughts on the pros and cons of working within and without the system.

DM: I’ve never found it to be an either/or. Some people did find that it had to be either/or. I’ve always said that I’m the best outsider on the inside. I would work for campaigns, whether it was Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy or local officials, but I also would go down south and get arrested and go to jail – I’ve been to jail about a dozen times for the things I believe in. I would organize the Iowa Caucuses for McCarty and then resist the draft. For me it’s never been an either/or. Somehow I’ve been able to get away with it, but I don’t know how! I just refuse to be confined to one path.

AB: One of the pretty essential things that you’ve done is that you were a founding member of the Municipal Election Committee of Los Angeles, which was the nation’s first gay PAC. Obviously we have many more gay PACs around and some of them have become pretty ingrained in Washington, like HRC has a PAC and they have been criticized in many ways – including by this website and myself – for becoming so ingrained that they have lost some of the –

DM: The luster.

AB: Yes, that’s a good word. So, how can an organization such as HRC or the Task Force – organizations that are in the halls of Washington – keep their luster while so ingrained?

DM: I guess one of the true signs of equality is that we indeed can become like anyone else. Our organizations within the beltway at times can be as removed from what’s happening outside as any other organization inside the beltway, whether it’s the NRA or the National Education Association. I think by nature of the beast, having to work on legislation and being based in Washington DC, that it’s very difficult to be a leading force out in the states, especially when issues are moving as fast as the marriage equality issues. I have always historically found Washington organizations catching up with local movements. Obviously the Task Force has more of an outreach into constituencies and organizations and has done a better job of redefining itself constantly as a grassroots organization. The HRC has become more and more of a traditional Washington organization, a PAC, a lobbying organization. The true test for all of our national organizations is how they respond to the epic battle that’s going to take place in California this November. We’ll see what they’re made of – I’m eager to see what they’re going to be doing.

mixnerhome.jpg
[Image via NY Times]

AB: Along those lines, about HRC and the Task Force going out into the states, Obama’s campaign has totally embraced Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. As we examine the 50-state strategy within Obama’s campaign, we have to look at the Democratic National Committee’s so-called “gay goals.” That system is indirectly a child of the McGovern Commission, which revamped party rules in 1968. You were on the committee, you helped write the party’s rules – do you think the DNC should have set affirmative action quotas for gay people, or are the goals preferable?

DM: Well, first of all, Gandhi says we have to watch our words as much as our actions. No, I don’t think they should have set quotas or affirmative action, but I do think that they need to make sure we have an inclusive party, that everyone has a voice in our party and is represented by what they bring to the table. And, you know, I also think that our national organizations – all of them – could have done a better job in working with local communities to help get delegates to the poor. For example, John Edwards didn’t even get on the delegate ballot in my Congressional district in New York, because you need x-amount of figures. What a great opportunity, had we had a coordinated campaign, to run gay delegates for somebody and said, “Okay, we might pick up some delegates.” I think our organizations missed the boat on delegate selection this year, I really do. I don’t blame the DNC. I blame us.

AB: The DNC’s current policy may not be perfect, but it does seem to be the most pragmatic. The biggest hurdle in my mind is getting local officials – and you’re right, this is really on gay organizations – in Louisiana or Florida or where to embrace an inclusive party, as well. And that’s hard.

DM: That’s right. That’s exactly right. I’ve been – since 1984, when I was head of the Hart campaign in California – I’ve been in the back rooms and it takes days to hammer out who gets delegates and who’s worthy and who’s not. It’s like, “Well, yeah, that person’s a member of the LGBT community, but he didn’t help us.” You’ve got to have people inside those meetings and the only way to get people inside those meetings is to be a player and I don’t think we were a significant enough player in these primaries.

AB: I want to go back to the past. I understand your college lover, Kit died in an accident when you were younger. His family never knew he was gay and you never went to his funeral. There was a story earlier this year about Major Alan Rogers, who died in Iraq. The papers didn’t mention his homosexuality, even though he was gay. The Washington Post later ran an editorial on whether it was right to leave that out. What’s your opinion on that? If somebody’s family doesn’t know that they’re gay, but their friends do and it’s an essential part of their identity, is that something that should be broached.

DM: Yeah, I think so, in a delicate way. You know, they’re going to know when all of his friends show up. They’re going to know when his lover’s sobbing over the casket. So, one way or another, those lives have to come together in grief around the death. I would hope there would be a way for them to find out aside from reading it in the newspaper. I still remain a somewhat minority against outing. I think you literally are taking a human being’s life into your own hands. I think that if someone had outed me – maybe my age is telling here – I would have probably killed myself had I been outed before I was ready. I would hate to think that we would, down the road in our passion for righteousness, did something that caused someone to kill themselves, that would destroy their relationships with their families, that were not given the time. I would like to think that we would approach that with love and support and create a community that would be such an attraction and such a safe place that they would innately feel comfortable being a part of.

AB: Do you regret not going to Kit’s funeral?

DM: I couldn’t have handled that. I was closeted. No, I don’t. I regret that I had no way or nobody to talk to and I was in total agony alone. Never have I felt so alone in my life. It wasn’t so much the funeral. It was the isolation.

Don't forget to share:

Help make sure LGBTQ+ stories are being told...

We can't rely on mainstream media to tell our stories. That's why we don't lock Queerty articles behind a paywall. Will you support our mission with a contribution today?

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated