David Benjamin Mixner was an American political activist and author. He was best known for his work in anti-war and gay rights advocacy. Mixner played a key role in defeating Proposition 6 in California, which sought to ban gays and lesbians from being schoolteachers. Wikipedia

March 13, 2024 
by Trip Gabriel

He persuaded Ronald Reagan to help defeat a proposed ban on L.G.B.T.Q. schoolteachers in California in 1978, and he sparred with his friend Bill Clinton over “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

David B. Mixner, a political strategist who played prominent roles in the anti-Vietnam War movement and in the arduous fight for gay rights, and whose decades-long influence with Bill Clinton spanned both eras, died on Monday at his home in Midtown Manhattan. He was 77.

The cause was complications of long-term Covid, said Steven Guy, a close friend.

Mr. Mixner, born three days apart from Mr. Clinton and raised in similar rural privation, met the future president when they were in their early 20s. He later arranged for Mr. Clinton to make the first public address by a major presidential candidate to a gay and lesbian audience, in 1992.

His political savvy was such that he was able to persuade California’s foremost conservative, Ronald Reagan, to oppose a 1978 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. Read more