Stranger Among Friends

Mixner, an openly gay campaign strategist and fund-raiser for Bill Clinton, mobilized gay and lesbian support for Clinton's presidential race, so he felt a deep sense of betrayal when the President, his longtime friend, abandoned his promise to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. This impassioned, absorbing memoir charts the gay and lesbian community's deteriorating relationship with the Clinton administration, as Mixner reveals how, as a senior adviser to the president, his public opposition on national television to Clinton's ""Don't ask, don't tell"" policy on gays in the military made him a pariah to the White House staff. Mixner, who grew up poor on a New Jersey farm, was active in the civil rights movement and was a leading anti-Vietnam War activist. His coming out, a long, difficult process, culminated in 1976 when, at age 30, he told his horrified parents he was gay. He writes movingly of his lover/business partner's death from AIDS, discusses his work as AIDS activist and campaign strategist for Clinton and George McGovern and muses on the pressures of being gay in a homophobic straight world. (Aug.)