~ by joel martens ~
One of the LGBTQ community’s great elder statesmen, David Mixner has been at the center of American politics and social change for the last 60 years. He’s helped to organize and lead countless fights since picketing and sending his own money as a teen to Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement. In his early college years, Mixner engaged in the anti-war effort as one of the head organizers of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam.
His constant fight for equality for the LGBTQ community is legendary, beginning after coming out of the closet himself in the mid-‘70s, then helping to found the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA), the nation’s first gay and lesbian Political Action Committee.
Mixner’s a firebrand for sure. He is filled with stories from inside those movements he’s been a part of, offering a vital perspective on the history of this country’s political landscape, its leaders, the fight for civil rights and for LGBTQ equality few can offer. As he laughingly said during this interview, “Not that I have opinions or anything… I’m an old hooker that has worked this block a long time and knows the low downs and what they’re into!”
Once named the most powerful man in America by Newsweek, Mixner was at the center of the HIV/AIDS struggle, raising funds and awareness to battle its stigmatization. He would also work to end the nuclear arms race and play a pivotal role in helping elect Bill Clinton to the Presidency.
Being on the frontlines can unfortunately leave you vulnerable, especially when you have a secret. Something Mixner is all too familiar with, having been threatened with blackmail during his work on the Vietnam War moratorium over photos taken of he and a federal worker named Frank. A man who approached him, offering romance, love, sex and sanctuary from discovery. All record of Frank’s existence vanished, with not a scrap of furniture or a trace of him left behind. The price? Exposure if Mixner didn’t spy on the anti-Vietnam war movement for his blackmailers.
His triumph over those who persecuted him is reminiscent of a spy novel, and just one of the many cataloged in Mixner’s fascinating mind. Thankfully, some are recorded in his books: Stranger Among Friends, Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage and At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow; and in his three-performance piece: Oh Hell No!, 1969 and Who Fell Into The Outhouse?, with more to come we understand.
Many are not, however. Let’s hope we’ve added a few to his cannon with this conversation.
You’ve been at the center of so many of this country’s social movements and a big part of the political landscape for the last 50 to 60 years. Tell us a little about what sparked the drive for being so involved.
It’s interesting that we’re doing this interview now. Ironically, last month was my 60th anniversary of organizing. For all those years, I have made myself a servant of the people. I started volunteering in 1959 with President John F. Kennedy and have continued to do so since.
There were a couple of factors and a couple people who influenced me and got me on this journey. One was John Kennedy, of course. He told all of us for the first time as Americans, there was a world outside and not only were we responsible for our fellow Americans, we were responsible for the planet as well. To go out into it and to become a part of it. Pope John XXIII who did Vatican II pointed me in the direction of liberation theology, which has sort of been a cornerstone for my purpose and everything I do. To put that theology in a one-line perspective: It means that God puts us here on Earth to do only one thing and that is to help others. I have done that very thing for the last 60 years.
I am so fascinated by what motivates people, great musicians, great actors, theologians and political leaders. The idea of helping, or affecting change somehow is a central tenant for many whom I have interviewed over the years.
There is no question that it was the cornerstone for me. I try to remind young people that issues come and go. When I get up in the morning, I will probably receive some new knowledge that will change my position on some issue today. Knowledge is a great motivator for transformation, but principles and values don’t change. They define who you are as a human being and we have to understand the distinction between the two and be willing to make sacrifices when those values or principles are challenged. Issues, however, depend on the amount of knowledge a person may or may not have about them.
david mixner and pete buttigieg from mixner’s personal collection
There was so much happening in the ‘60s and ‘70s politically and socially in American. How much influence did the Civil Rights Movement and the war in Vietnam have on your outlook?
I think a great deal. Dr. Martin Luther King also had an enormous influence on my life, as well. It’s interesting to note that at the time, young people were going down south by the thousands to put their lives in danger and serve. In some cases surrendering their lives, so that people would have equality and the right to vote in America. In an interesting way, what we were doing around Vietnam and the war back then, reminds me a little of what the students are doing around the Parkland massacre today.
We were the ones dying in Vietnam, we were the cannon fodder. 55,000 mostly young men, and some women died at the average age of 19- to 21-years-old. While we were doing the dying and the killing was happening, there was a silly political debate taking place of whether or not we could call for an immediate withdrawal. A sort of “could we do this, or could we do that,” and nobody was stopping the killing.
If you want to know what the Vietnam War was like for those of us who were young then, the Parkland students remind me a lot of that. They too realized that they are the ones dying and the adults were sitting there doing nothing.
Vietnam was such a formative moment for me. It was the first time I understood what death was because I saw the war in print and on television. Like the AIDS crisis, it was personal because we knew people who died during both. I get the comparison you’re making, because on some level, the Parkland kids are doing that same thing.
I went to four military funerals, including my best friend from high school. If you’ve ever been to a one and watched a family grieve a young person, you cannot remain silent. You just can’t sit on the sidelines, you have to make a choice. Is this death correct or has it been expended by the state for no reason? How ironic is it, that the government we fought so viciously against in Vietnam and basically lost the war to, is now one of our biggest tourist attractions and in fact, one of our biggest allies in Southeast Asia? And, the government hasn’t really changed.
It’s an interesting commentary on how the enemy becomes the friend, and how futile war can often be.
Exactly. It should remind us that before we take the nation to war, that we really know why and believe in the reason why. This jingoistic stuff just ends up killing young people and civilians in the end. When we allow fear to replace knowledge and facts, or we allow fear to eradicate science, that’s where the danger is.
There was so much change happening during the Vietnam War, which took place from ’55 to ’73, Stonewall in New York took place right in the middle of all that in ‘69. How aware were you of the riots and how much did it effect you?
You have to remember how different things were back then. I was very closeted until I was 30 and had some difficult experiences earlier: being blackmailed and dealing with the death of someone that I loved very much in a traffic accident. Stonewall didn’t just happen like a match, there were many things that took place before to start that fire. There were 4,000 lobotomies performed in one year on gay people; they basically took an ice pick to our brains. The police were raiding dinner parties and bars and lining us up outside and locking us up. They would pull us over and search our cars and ticket us for nonsensical stuff, just to intimidate us. We lived with a great deal of fear back then.
I am a classic example of a person who Stonewall had an enormous impact on. I was just blown away, but it changed me. I cut out The New York Times clipping about the Stonewall insurrection and carried it around in my wallet with me. There was a time when I came very close to killing myself later that year. I was in a drunken stupor, with gun in hand and I pulled that clipping out, read it and thought, “Fuck it. If they can fight, so can I.”
Stonewall was a game changer for so many. Though I think it’s interesting that it really wasn’t the first rebellion, it just became the most famous.
It sort of represented the last straw and really was like a perfect storm that came together. The fact is, there was a long history of oppression that motivated the rebellion. Most forget things like when they liberated the concentration camps in WWII, the gay inmates in those camps were re-imprisoned because the Allies believed they had been justifiably arrested by the Third Reich under Paragraph 175. [A 19th-century German statute, which was expanded to categorize homosexuality as a crime of “indecency.”] Imagine the horror of that. It’s that kind of thing Stonewall and the gay liberation movement came out of, a brutal, tragic, dark history of oppression.
How fear was used in the political landscape back then is reminiscent of what’s happening today. I’m curious about what you feel the best ways to combat and overcome that fear mongering.
I stayed with a Civil Rights leader in Louisville, Mississippi in ‘64 or ’65, named Fannie Lou Hamer. She’s a legend. She had been permanently disabled from beatings by the police for attempting to vote. I asked her, “Where do you get the courage, Mrs. Hamer? How do you find it?” She just looked at me and said, “Oh honey, courage is just a lack of options.” Freedom requires an enormous amount of courage and forces us to walk through that fear. It requires us to bear witness and to make sacrifices. I have learned that every single time I have walk through fear, there has been a victory on the other side. Emotionally, politically or personally, I have emerged as a stronger, better person.
=The lack of options is what made us rise up during the AIDS crisis as well. No one was willing to acknowledge we were dying or to help in any way, so we started fighting… literally for our lives.
=It’s very similar to Vietnam and has similar roots in what’s happened with the Parkland kids like I mentioned. We were the ones dying and no one was doing anything about it. If you tested HIV positive, you were gay, period. So that drove us out of the closet, it drove us to understand how the oppression that we had been living with and was stopping us from getting healthcare. Even doctors and hospitals were turning us away. We were dying in the thousands, so like any sensible community, we turned inward. We are perhaps one of the greatest stories of courage in the last century. We were a community facing extinction, fighting back in order to survive… and we did it.
=This is one of the reasons I love to have conversations with our LGBTQ elders. It’s a way to make sure our movement is documented. I don’t think many really understand how little people cared, even after thousands and thousands had died.
=There is good news and bad news about our youth not knowing that information. The good news is that they haven’t experienced it. God knows, I would never wish that on another person, ever. The bad news is that if you don’t know your history, you are doomed to relive it. We can never let our guard down.
What I’m saying ultimately, is that when you are faced with adversity, just find a new voice. I still have something to say, so I found a way to add value and to give voice to those who have no name. I’m blessed to be acknowledged by the LGBTQ community and especially now by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. Quite honestly, I can’t wait to hear them sing Happy Birthday to me! (Laughs) I mean, who gets to have 500 men sing Happy Birthday to them? I’m going to have to put a raincoat on my lap!
I’m being honored because they know of my work. The truth is though, there are thousands and thousands of people whose names we will never know and who will never be acknowledged that made it possible for me to be here. Those who died and fought till their last breath. We will never know their names, but we can remember what it resulted in.
That’s one of the great things about getting a little older, you gain perspective. To understand that though there is more to do, the world is a better place for most of us than it was.
Yes. The purpose of a movement is not to proclaim one’s self-righteousness, the purpose of a movement is to change minds. And once those minds are changed, to make them comfortable enough to join you. In my lifetime, I have gone from the fear of basically having an ice pick stuck in my brain, to being able to vote for someone for President of the United States, who just happens to be gay. What an extraordinary journey to be able to witness that.
David Mixner will be honored with a Lifetime Legend Award during GMCLA’s upcoming concert and gala, GMCLA 40/STONEWALL 50 in celebration of the chorus’s 40th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Stonewall at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Friday, August 16. For tickets and more information, go to gmcla.org.