One Day at a Time’s Mackenzie Phillips Reveals She’s Dated Women

Author: Alex Cooper

During a recent appearance on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast, Mackenzie Phillips said that she had dated both men and women.

In a conversation with Phillips, Yontef told her that she has many queer fans and asked, “You are kind of a gay icon, Mackenzie. Like do you realize that?”

“I love that,” the actor and former child star responded. “And I also love that I throughout my life have lived on both sides of the curtain. I’ve had boyfriends, I’ve had girlfriends, you know, throughout my life. I am neither one nor the other. I love our gay community.”

“I mean, I love everybody,” she said, before clarifying “not everybody. Almost.”

It seems to be the first time Phillips has revealed her queerness, according to Radar.

Phillips, who is a former drug addict, is now a program director at Breathe Life Healing Centers in West Hollywood, Calif. The center offers treatment for “a wide variety of additions, underlying psychological issues, and trauma,” according to its website.

She told Yontef that she works closely with LGBTQ+ people in her work at Breathe Life.

“Breathe Life Healing Center is LGBT owned and operated,” Phillips explained. “One of our most attended tracks that we have here is a chem sex track which is gay men with crystal meth and sex addiction issues because those are so entangled.”

She also shared on the podcast her reconciliation with her family including her half-sisters actress Bijou Phillips and singer Chynna Phillips – as well as her brother-in-law and Chynna Phillips’ husband, Billy Baldwin, after she wrote in her 2009 memoir High On Arrival that she had an incestuous relationship with her father, the late John Phillips of the Mamas & Pappas.

“Had I known the distress it would’ve caused everybody on such a visceral level, I would certainly have considered doing things slightly differently. I certainly would not have decided to not tell my truth, because my truth needed to be told, but I likely would have done it slightly differently,” she explained. Phillips said over the years the wounds have healed over.

“Just in case anybody was wondering, there’s a family thread,” she told Yontef. “We all text and we’re all in touch. And we spend time together whenever we can.”

For all that she’s been through, Phillips told Yontef she’s proud of herself in many ways.

“Not only did I survive, I actually am thriving,” she said. “And so that is something that I’m proud that I have weathered the storm, but I’m 62 years old. You know, what the F to be still here. I’m quite often amazed that I’m able to even put together an elusive sentence, let alone a paragraph, let alone help run a treatment center.”

Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Alex Cooper