Politics & Power Quote by Andrew Sullivan

Democracy’s home-team mythology takes a hit here: the ballot box, Sullivan reminds us, is not automatically a moral instrument. The line’s sting comes from how casually it reverses a civic comfort food - that “the people” reliably deliver justice. By shrinking the target to a “tiny and despised minority,” he forces the reader to picture a group with no leverage, no coalitions, no cultural capital. Then he adds the cruel procedural flourish: “up for a popular vote.” Not debated, not protected, not argued in court, but submitted to the mood of the crowd like a referendum on someone else’s dignity.

The subtext is a warning about majoritarianism dressed up as virtue. Popular votes feel clean, neutral, even empowering; Sullivan suggests they can function as laundering mechanisms for prejudice. If discrimination is ratified by a majority, it gets to call itself “democratic” instead of what it is. That’s why the sentence is built like a taut little syllogism: despised minority + popularity contest = predictable defeat. No melodrama needed; the fatalism is the point.

Contextually, Sullivan’s career tracks the late-20th and early-21st-century fights where minority rights were literally put on ballots - especially LGBTQ rights (marriage bans, “family values” initiatives), but also any civil-liberties question where the majority is asked to approve the minority’s place in public life. The intent isn’t to sneer at democracy; it’s to argue for its missing hardware: constitutional rights, courts, and norms that prevent “popular” from becoming a synonym for “licensed to harm.”