Longtime LGBTQ+ activist and political adviser David Mixner has died at 77. A friend said the cause of death was complications of long-term COVID. David Mixner was famously close friends with Bill Clinton, on whose presidential campaign he worked. But the relationship fractured after Clinton walked back his promise to end discrimination against LGBTQ people in the military, which Mixner harshly condemned. He was arrested at a 1993 protest against Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy outside the White House. This is David Mixner on Democracy Now! in 1996.

David Mixner: “And we’ve got to get our act together. You know, the Christian Coalition has been organizing. They’ve been taking over school boards. They’ve been taking over water boards. They’ve been taking over taxation boards at the local level. And for years, I think, on the progressive movement and on the left, we have accepted the criteria that they’re better than the other guy. And so, we have always been put in that position of accepting someone just a little better than someone worse. And I think we shouldn’t accept that anymore.”