DO ASK DO TELL

IT’S not the first crime I’ve committed,” said David Mixner as he prepared to toss an apple into his backyard in Livingston Manor, N.Y.

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Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
The kitchen doesn’t get much use, but the screened porch does.
The apple was for Attila, one of more than a dozen deer Mr. Mixner has befriended since moving to this tiny town in Sullivan County.
Feeding deer is illegal in New York. But Mr. Mixner is both an animal lover (in winter, when the deer look gaunt, he goes through two bushels of apples a day) and an experienced lawbreaker.
He has been jailed, he said, more than a dozen times, all as a result of fighting to end segregation and the Vietnam War and later to secure rights for gay men and lesbians.
His most famous arrest came in 1993, when he chained himself to the fence outside the White House to protest President Bill Clinton’s policy on gays in the military, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
That incident made news because Mr. Mixner had been a friend of Mr. Clinton since the 1960s and had worked to help him win the presidency. Mr. Clinton’s victory in 1992 was, for Mr. Mixner, a triumph soon followed by anguish over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And then came a public reconciliation, in 1999, when Mr. Mixner gathered nearly 1,000 gay men and lesbians in Los Angeles to thank Mr. Clinton for his efforts to advance equal rights.
In those days, Mr. Mixner was, according to The New York Times, “the premier gay political impresario” in Los Angeles. He was able to bring in millions of dollars from gay men and lesbians for candidates he favored.
But Mr. Mixner’s roots are in Salem County, in southern New Jersey, an area so rural — and so reminiscent of the Deep South, he said — that when he was growing up in the 1950s it was known as Little Dixie. Though he despised the segregation and poverty of Elmer, his hometown, Mr. Mixner also has fond memories of an agrarian society where neighbors relied on one another.
“If someone’s house burnt down, we took them clothes and blankets — it didn’t matter what race they were,” he said.
By the time he was in high school, Mr. Mixner had found his calling in political activism. Eventually, his work took him to cities: Washington, where in 1969 he helped organize a moratorium against the Vietnam War; Los Angeles, where he founded a political consulting firm; and New York, where in the 1990s he became a media presence. (His memoir, “Stranger Among Friends,” was published by Bantam in 1996.)
In 2004, he decided to settle in Manhattan, where he rented an apartment near Tudor City. “I went to plays, galleries, openings — all of it,” he said.
But he was alone, he said, a result of losing most of his close friends (and one longtime partner) to AIDS. All together, Mr. Mixner said, 286 friends have died of the disease. “I was growing old without peers,” he said, “and nothing I could do could change that fact.”
True, he has a wide circle of younger friends, including numerous gay activists, who regard him as a mentor. But when it came to socializing, he said, “I was no longer willing to do the things that younger people do.” It was time, he said, to plan for the next chapter of his life. And that, he said, meant getting back to nature.
Mr. Mixner, now 60, began looking for a country house. But it wasn’t going to be a second home (he didn’t have the money, he said), and it wasn’t going to be in the Hamptons (same reason).
So he looked in Sullivan County, where many properties sell for less than $300,000. Last summer, he found a ranch house under construction, on a concave mountainside called Turkey Hollow, approximate population 10.
Mr. Mixner was able to buy the house, the detached garage and the surrounding six acres for $273,000.
He moved in last October, just in time for a brutal winter. He knew the place was isolated — there is no cable TV, no mail delivery and only sporadic cellphone service. But those problems were the least of it. The dirt road to Mr. Mixner’s house is so steep that it’s difficult for snowplows to reach his driveway. As a result, he was snowed in for eight days last winter, including one three-day stretch in March.
It didn’t help that Mr. Mixner, a large man, was having trouble walking. He explained that his left leg was injured by police officers with nightsticks during a protest in Chicago in 1968, the right in a slip in his backyard last winter. (For much of the spring, he used a cane.)
But partial immobility had a plus side. He has learned that he can rely on his neighbors. “In the pioneer days, you had to count on your neighbors,” he said. “It’s the same here — we need each other. I have to get to know them, and they have to get to know me. And even if we have political differences, or different backgrounds, we keep it civil.”
Most of Mr. Mixner’s socializing is with activist friends from New York, like Alan Van Capelle, the 32-year-old director of the Empire State Pride Agenda. Mr. Mixner doesn’t cook, but he owns cookbooks: he has been known to e-mail recipe “suggestions” to his friends before they drive up from Manhattan. (The nearest market is six miles away, and the restaurants in the area, he said, close at 7 p.m.)
The house is a modest ranch with a full basement. To make it more to his liking, Mr. Mixner had the exterior painted bright yellow and added a front porch, where he sits in a rocking chair while waiting for visitors to arrive. He also had a screened porch built in back; there, he watches (and occasionally converses with) the deer.
“I thought I’d be living like Thoreau, but it’s more like Dr. Dolittle,” he said. (The porch contains a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.)
Inside, the cheerful rooms are filled with artwork and memorabilia, including antiwar posters and newspaper clippings. One sculpture consists of the faces of friends who died of AIDS, molded in Lucite and lighted from behind with neon. He never turns it off. “It’s my eternal flame,” he said.
His other eternal flame is the computer screen. Mr. Mixner’s main activity these days is blogging — his site, davidmixner.com, offers a mix of political discourse, arts criticism and folksy commentary on day-to-day life in Turkey Hollow. “People will stop me on the street in New York and ask me about Attila and Kate,” he said, referring to the deer mentioned in many of his postings.
Not that he has forgotten about politics. “I have more political influence here than I did living in the city,” he said.
Last winter, Mr. Mixner endorsed John Edwards for president. The leading Democratic candidates, he said, have similar views on gay rights, but Mr. Edwards, he believes, has the best position on Iraq. Although Mr. Mixner no longer raises money for candidates, he is closely connected to people who do.
But mostly, he said, he is interested in nurturing deer like Attila and young gay activists like Mr. Van Capelle. The house, he said, “is a sanctuary for animals and a sanctuary for ideas.”

Ask George & Chuck: Questions from Consumers

Question (CO): This is a follow-up about a question you answered in regards to NHBCorp. They are selling rights to territories for $9800 to potential representatives. They claim to generate 5 to 10 home sales per month through their system. I have included a copy of their purchase agreement that they give to people who want to sell their homes through their system. These leads are then transferred to the representatives who have paid the $9800 territory fee. Please let me know your thoughts on their system and their attached agreement.
Answer: We understand why you would ask your question. However, you have asked us for our opinion regarding a legal document and we do not provide legal advice in this column. You will have to contact a Colorado attorney to offer an opinion regarding this document.
There is a difference between providing advice regarding real estate matters, and providing legal advice. One must be an attorney at law to offer legal advice or opinions. I am a licensed real estate broker in Texas, Georgia and Massachusetts and a licensed Mortgage Broker in Texas. Chuck Jacobus is a licensed real estate broker in Texas and a licensed attorney at law with Texas Board Certifications in Residential and Commercial real estate.
However, our column only answers real estate questions. Disclosed in every column we publish and every question we answer is the following: "NOTE: The answers to any questions delivered to the "Ask George & Chuck" column do not contain legal advice. If you wish to obtain legal advice, you should consult your own attorney." We hope this helps direct you the a person who will be able to provide you -- legal -- and sound advice!
Question (GA): I am buying a house in Georgia, and I was wondering if it is legal to have a contract without a closing date. The sales agent wrote 'TBD' for the closing date, and when I ask her for a specific date, she tries to avoid the answer. I know this isn't right and I want to know if not providing a closing date is illegal.
Answer: "TBD" as the Closing Date (referred to in many Georgia Purchase and Sale Agreements as the "Settlement Date") is not an adequate description for that paragraph. If the offer you made through your sales agent with "TBD" indicated for the Closing Date, that offer never met all the requirements to change from an "offer" to a "contract." The Closing Date must be a date certain, agreed to by all parties.
Question (MI): I had a house for sale listed with a national real estate franchise whose offices are individually owned and operated. I asked the listing agent to list for 3 months, he listed for 6, and I signed the contract not noticing. At the end of three months I asked the realtor to take the house off the market. He said I could not do that because I was in a listing contract for six months.
At around the middle of the fourth month I had a verbal offer from the listing agent's brother who is a Realtor as well. But the deal did not go through as the client changed his mind. At the end of six months I took the house off the market and put up the sale by owner sign.
About four months later I get a call for a showing. I agreed on the selling price and took the deposit. I then found out later that the client was the same one that changed his mind to purchase the house from the Realtor a few months earlier. I delayed the sale until the 6 months from taking the house off the market expired. Nonetheless, the Realtor states that he wants his 6 percent commission.
Should he have had to present me with a listing of all showings so I would have been aware of which buyers had seen the house through the listing brokerage? If they did not, are they entitled to the commission?
Answer: The real estate Listing Agreement contains the terms and provisions to which you as a seller are contractually obligated once you and the listing agent have signed the agreement. Since we don't have a copy of your Listing Agreement, we cannot comment upon it or the language it may or may not have regarding a "protection period" after its expiration. The same holds true as to what the real estate agent is obligated to do – if anything, in order to secure his or her rights to a commission in the event a potential buyer actually buys the subject property during the protection period.
If the language is the same as the Michigan Realtors G-1 contract wording, then it is our opinion that you probably do not owe the Listing Realtor the commission. This is based upon the language, "Seller will also pay Broker the commission if, within (we're assuming '6' goes in this blank) months after this contract expires, anyone except another REALTOR® sells the property to someone who learned about it through Broker's efforts during the term of the contract. However, you should hire your own attorney to review your actual listing agreement.
In closing, we offer you a piece of advice in all sincerity: You really need to read the entire document carefully -- whether it is a listing agreement, a purchase and sale agreement, or any other legal document, before you sign it. Any terms or words used in a document are fair game for you to question. And, if the real estate agent with whom you are dealing sounds unsure or hesitant about the meaning or meanings, hire an attorney to review the contract. In fact, unless you have had successful experiences with a real estate agent, it is a good idea to have an attorney review the filled in contract BEFORE you sign it.
Question (OR): I was told that if I couldn't make my entire monthly mortgage payment that I could send in, say, $100.00 and the lender could not initiate foreclosure action because I had made a partial payment. Is that true?
Answer: Unless it was the lender who told you that or provided you with a written statement to that effect, we cannot tell you that it is true. However, the best source for you to check it out is the lender. Call the customer service number provided on nearly every communication you receive from that lender, and ask the customer service representative. Also, let the lender know you are having trouble making the agreed upon mortgage payment. The lender may be able to offer you a legitimate solution to you cash bind.