Former Bill Clinton advisor admits to assisting suicide of 8 men with AIDS in the 80s
David Mixner, a prominent LGBT activist and a former campaigner for Bill Clinton has admitted to his part in the assisted suicide of eight gay men who were dying from AIDS in the 1980s.
The 68-year-old made the revelation during a performance of his one-man stage show ‘Oh Hell No’, put on to raise money for LGBT youth scholarship charity the Point Foundation.
He said that he had been part of an underground euthanasia network that had helped people who were dying of AIDS pass away with dignity at a time of their own choosing with the assistance of medical professionals.
The network operated before there were effective treatments.
“I am not worried, and what I did was right,” Mr Mixner told The Daily Beast.
“In the end I wanted people to know about these decisions I had to take in my 30s that no one should have to take in their 30s.”
One of the deaths he assisted, he said, was that of his late partner Peter Scott.
“This was the man I loved most in my life. AIDS was such a horrendous death.
“It was slow, painful, you’d waste away, starve, be covered in lesions. Some of those with it knew they did not want to live beyond a certain point. Out of a desire for dignity and honour, they asked their friends to help them die.”
Mr Mixner added that he would only help the men to die when he was “100 per cent sure there was no hope” that they could survive the illness.
He said that some patients “got angry” when he declined to assist them, “but I could only held to do it when it felt right to me.”
On average, he estimated that he lost 300 friends to AIDs during the 1980. He claims to have delivered 90 eulogies in just two years.
Mr Mixner fought for the rights of HIV positive people from the start of the epidemic. In 1985 he helped defeat Proposition 64, a California ballot initiative that would have quarantined people with AIDS.
Mr Mixner was a founding member of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA), America’s first gay and lesbian Political Action Committee.
He became involved in Democratic politics in 1960 and made his name protesting against the Vietman War.
He came out in 1976 to fight a California ballot that would have made it illegal for gays and lesbians to be school teachers.
Mr Mixner raised money for President Clinton’s first campaign and worked on his transition team, but fell out with him after the ban on gay Americans in the military was retained in 1993.
He was later arrested at a protest outside the White House. The pair eventually mended their friendship.
In October 2008, Mr Mixner was the guest of honour at a private Downing Street lunch hosted by Sarah Brown, the wife of the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
