David B. Mixner
David B. Mixner, an accomplished political strategist who played prominent roles in the anti-Vietnam War movement and in the fight for gay rights, died March 11, 2024, at his home in Manhattan. He was 77. The cause was complications of long-term COVID.
David Benjamin Mixner was born on August 16, 1946, in Salem County, New Jersey, the youngest of three children. A brother, Melvin, survives him.
Mixner’s political activism started at a local level shortly after he entered Arizona State University in 1964 and soon expanded to the national level when he transferred to the University of Maryland to be closer to the Washington, DC, hub of the anti-war movement. There, he volunteered as an organizer of the 1967 March on the Pentagon. He dropped out of college shortly thereafter to devote himself to work as a political organizer.
He was part of Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign in 1968 and was a presence at the Democratic convention in Chicago that year. He was one of four national co-chairs of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, a series of major protests in the fall of 1969. He was already a Democratic insider in the 1960s and early ‘70s, when almost all gay people in politics were closeted. Mixner wrote in a 1996 memoir, Stranger Among Friends, that he dreamed of a public-service career but was convinced that his “terrible secret” of homosexuality would not permit it.
In 1976, Mixner helped found the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles, the first gay and lesbian political action committee in the country, and became a leading advocate for gay rights. In 1977 he came out, at age 30, while serving as campaign manager for Tom Bradley’s successful bid for re-election as mayor of Los Angeles.
A skilled strategist—and very successful fundraiser—Mixner soon became a leading advocate for gay rights. In 1978, he was able to persuade California’s foremost conservative, Ronald Reagan, to oppose a state initiative to ban gay schoolteachers. The defeat of the measure was at that point the most significant win for gay rights in the country.
Mixner, a contemporary of Bill Clinton’s, met the future president when they were in their early 20s. “When I met him when he was young,” Clinton said of Mixner in 1999, “I thought I’d never met a person whose heart burned with the fire of social justice so strong.” The two formed a close friendship, based partly on their respective humble beginnings.
During the 1980s and early ’90s, AIDS claimed many leaders of the gay rights movement. After years of inaction on AIDS by the White Houses of Ronald Reagan and his successor, George H.W. Bush, LGBTQ activists were hoping the 1992 presidential election would turn that around. Mixner’s friend, now-candidate Clinton, asked him to raise money and build support in the gay community on his behalf.
Mixner asked where Clinton stood on HIV/AIDS and gay rights, before agreeing to help. In May 1992, Mixner introduced Clinton to 500 gay donors at a fundraiser in Los Angeles. To raucous applause, Clinton said, “What I came here today to tell you in simple terms is, I have a vision and you are part of it.”
His promises included devoting federal dollars to HIV/AIDS research and ending the long-standing ban on gays serving openly in the military. Mixner was credited with raising $3.4 million dollars for the Clinton campaign.
When Clinton compromised on his pledge to end the ban, instead implementing a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Mixner felt betrayed. In July 1993, Mixner helped lead a protest over “don’t ask, don’t tell” outside the White House, famously being led away in handcuffs. He also spoke out against Clinton’s decision to sign the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Eventually, the two reconciled their political differences before Clinton completed his terms of office.
In 2008, when Mixner received an award from the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, he recalled his life’s trajectory. He expressed pride in his political activism, but mourned the toll AIDS took on his generation of gay men. “All of my peers died of AIDS, and I have no one to celebrate my past or my journey, or to help me pass down stories to the next generation,” he said. “We lost an entire generation of storytellers.”
Funeral services were held on March 25 at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City. Memorial donations may be made to the David Mixner Memorial Fund at the Ali Forney Center (aliforneycenter.org). The Center is dedicated to serving LGBTQ+ homeless youth, with a 24/7 drop-in center and 17 housing sites across New York City.
More about David Mixner may be found on page 8 and in the September 22, 2023 issue of Letters. ▼
Photo credit: Elvert Barnes - DavidMixner.NEM.Rally.USC.WDC.11October2009
William “Bill” Kelly
William Daniel “Bill” Kelly, 95, of Milton, passed away peacefully Saturday, February 24, having for three years battled complications from two strokes suffered in January 2021.
He was born September 25, 1928, to Clarence Allen Kelly and Emily Lucille Edwards in Toccoa, Georgia.
A veteran of both the US Army, which he joined in 1946, where he was stationed in post-war Germany, and the US Air Force, which he joined in 1953, where he was stationed in post-war Japan, and was discharged in 1957, Bill loved to tell stories of his time served in both Germany and Japan.
After training to be an electrician in the Air Force, Bill secured a job as an electronics technician for RCA and later GE. Bill spent most of his career working in the field across the US and Alaska, often for months at a time. He loved talking about the time he worked at the top of the Sears Tower building in Chicago, and at the Today Show studio in New York City. Bill loved his job.
In July of 1964, Bill met the love of his life, Ronald “Ron” Tipton, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During their long life together, Bill and Ron lived in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and Philadelphia and Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and eventually moved to Delaware for their retirement years. To their friends and neighbors, the lives of Bill and Ron were a love story.
Bill is survived by his loving partner and husband of 59 years, and his devoted caregiver for the last three years of his life, Ron Tipton. Bill is also survived by his niece, Joyce Brown MacFarlin, of Cornelia, Georgia.
Funeral services will be private. ▼