Political Notebook: Award recognizes Mixner's pioneering ways

by Matthew S. Bajko
The Bay Area Reporter

There isn't much that David Mixner hasn't done in the course of his 61 years. Nor is there a chapter in American political history over the last five decades in which Mixner didn't play some role.

He became an activist in the civil rights movement over the objections of his parents and protested the Vietnam War. He worked closely with the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk to defeat an anti-gay measure that would have barred gays from being teachers.

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HISTORY: Randolfe “Randy” Wicker

by Randolfe “Randy” Wicker

As a teenager during the 1950s, I knew I was homosexual.

In the 1950s, newspapers and magazines only covered homosexual scandals: Child killers, Leopold and Loeb; Burgess and McLean, British spies who’d defected to the Soviet Union; Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “hunt” for homosexuals working for the government; police round-ups of “perverts,” usually featuring photos of drag queens, make-up askew, sitting in a paddy wagon.

I had no problem accepting my homosexuality. I only feared discovery. As a college freshman, I kept a diary that detailed the crush I’d developed on a fellow student. My father found my diary and read it. Fortunately, the psychiatrist he consulted advised him that I’d always be homosexual.

“It’s your life to live,” he surmised. “I don’t think you are going to get very far with this. I ask just one thing: that you not involve my good name.

“I’ve lived the American dream,” I declared. “In my lifetime, homosexuals have gone from being criminals to being a legitimate minority group. We may not have ‘full equality’ yet, but we’re slowly getting there.

Yolanda Retter, Scholar And LGBT Activist, Dies

Yolanda Retter, an activist, archivist and scholar who devoted the last four decades to raising the visibility of lesbians and minorities and preserving their history, has died. She was 59.

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Retter died Aug. 18 at her home in Van Nuys after a brief illness, the Los Angeles Times reported.

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She was a pivotal advocate for lesbians during the early years of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, the country's first social service agency to exclusively serve gays. She helped organize lesbian history repositories at USC, UCLA and in West Hollywood, it was reported.

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Retter is survived by her partner of 13 years, Leslie Golden Stampler; her father, Henry, and stepmother, Dottie, of Florida; Stampler's two children, Belinda and Martin; and six brothers and sisters, according to reports.

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A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Sept. 29 at Metropolitan Community Church, 8714 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, according to The Times. Memorial donations may be sent to the Yolanda Retter Foundation, c/o Law Office of Karen L. Mateer, 618 S. Lake Ave., Pasadena, CA 91106.