David Mixner
In his memoir, Stranger Among Friends, Mixner explains that his parents were "livid" over his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, claiming his activism embarrassed them.
[citation needed] In early 1969, Mixner was invited to join the Delegate Selection Committee, where he served as his generation's voice, and he intended to use the platform to raise the issue of the violence at the previous year's convention.
Grossman proposed to Sam Brown, a close friend of Mixner, that they set aside a day in 1969 where "business as usual" would come to a halt, essentially engaging in a strike against everything.
Brown soon enlisted the help of Mixner, David Hawk, another young activist, and Marge Sklencar, whom they knew from the McCarthy campaign.
This protest of about a thousand people gathered in front of the American embassy in London would later be a significant issue in Clinton's presidential campaign, with President George H. W. Bush telling Larry King on CNN in October 1992, "Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but to go to a foreign country and demonstrate against your own country when your sons and daughters are dying halfway around the world, I am sorry but I think that is wrong.
"[7] The Moratorium drew millions of people throughout the country, who gathered in public places and read the names of the soldiers killed in Vietnam aloud.
[citation needed] Soon after Bradley won reelection easily, Mixner turned his focus to fighting Proposition 6, an initiative placed on the California ballot by Orange County State Senator John Briggs that would make it illegal for gays and lesbians to be schoolteachers.
[10] Mixner and his lover Peter Scott secured a meeting with former Governor and future President Ronald Reagan, whom they convinced to oppose the initiative publicly.
[4][11][12] As a result, and through the work of Mixner, Scott, legendary gay rights activist and San Francisco City Councilman Harvey Milk, and others, Proposition 6 was defeated by over a million votes, the first ballot initiative of its sort to be shot down.
In late 1984, after years of devastation in his personal life resulting from the AIDS crisis, Mixner decided to focus his energy on combating nuclear proliferation, creating an organization named PRO Peace.
Mixner envisioned finding five thousand Americans who would take a year out of their lives to walk across America to advocate for disarmament, holding rallies throughout the country.
Two weeks later, 500 members of the group continued onwards and eventually reached Washington, D.C.[16] Shortly after Mixner experienced professional success in 1985, helping defeat Proposition 64, a ballot initiative proposed by Lyndon LaRouche that would require quarantining people with AIDS, Mixner learned that his long-time lover and business partner, Peter Scott, had AIDS.
Mixner's group enlisted the support of California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, then convinced California Governor George Deukmejian to sign AB 1952, which, as described by van de Kamp, "mandates the director of DHS to implement the drug testing and sale authority that he had under existing law, for the purpose of approving the testing and sale either of an AIDS vaccine, or of new drugs that offer a reasonable possibility of treating people who have been infected with the AIDS virus."
However, he also had angered the White House for attacking Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sam Nunn, who in a speech Mixner referred to as an "old-fashioned bigot" for opposing Clinton's plan to lift the ban on gays in the military.
[19] When Mixner went on Nightline to complain about Clinton's rapid shift away from allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, his calls to the White House stopped being returned and his consulting business began to decline, as he was no longer perceived as someone who had influence with the new administration.
Among the performers who have appeared in these shows are Tony nominees Bobby Steggert and Rory O'Malley, Emily Swallow (The Mentalist), Chris Bolan (Mamma Mia!
and Sideshow), country and western Singer Chely Wright, jazz saxophone great Dave Koz, Will Reynolds (actor/writer), Broadway legend T. Oliver Reid, Megan Ostrahause (Mary Poppins), and others.
The autobiographical show, a one-night-only event to benefit the Point Foundation, featured Mixner revealing intensely personal details about the struggles he had faced, including the pain of losing 300 friends to AIDS in the 1980s.
[35] In March 2015, Jacob’s Ladder, a play written by Mixner and Dennis Bailey, debuted at the Boyd Vance Theatre at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center in Austin, Texas.
The play, a historical drama set during World War II, concerns a Jewish White House aide's discovery of a secret proposal to bomb Hitler's Concentration Camps in Eastern Europe.
Mixner was introduced by the president of COC Netherlands, Astrid Oosenbrug, and member of the Senate & human rights activist Boris Dittrich.
[38] In 2021, the Institute of Current World Affairs and trustee Fabrice Houdart set up the David Mixner LGBTQ+ Writing Fellowship for young writers to immerse themselves in a specific LGBTQ+ issue abroad.
