# Andrew Sullivan
**Andrew Sullivan** (born 1963) is an English-born American author, editor, and blogger, a former editor of *The New Republic*, a pioneer of political blogging, and one of the earliest public advocates of same-sex marriage in the United States.[1](https://www.allsides.com/news-source/andrew-sullivan-media-bias) • [2](https://time.com/3937477/how-gay-marriage-won/) He describes himself as a conservative in the tradition of the philosopher [Michael Oakeshott](https://www.edgepedia.org/michael-oakeshott), valuing prudence, civil debate, and gradual reform, and he has drawn criticism from both the left and the right over a career spanning more than 30 years.[3](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/andrew-sullivan-the-weekly-dish-bias-and-credibility/) • [4](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-sullivan-60-minutes-2021-11-14/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 1963, South Godstone, Surrey, England[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) |
| Education | Reigate Grammar School; modern history and languages at Magdalen College, Oxford; PhD in government from Harvard on Michael Oakeshott[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) |
| *The New Republic* | Editor from 1991 to 1996[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) |
| Gay marriage | 1989 *New Republic* essay "A (Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage"; book *Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality*[2](https://time.com/3937477/how-gay-marriage-won/) • [5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) |
| Blogging | Founded The Daily Dish in 2000; hosted by Time, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and Newsweek; independent subscription site from 2013[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) |
| Later outlets | New York Magazine columnist 2016–2020; Substack newsletter The Weekly Dish since 2020[6](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/18/anti-trump-british-journalist-quits-new-york-magazine-in-woke-row) |
| Personal life | Openly gay and HIV positive; married the actor Aaron Tone in Massachusetts in 2007[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) |
## Early life and education
Sullivan grew up in small-town Sussex, the son of an insurance company worker father and a mother who suffered with her mental health. His Catholicism derives from Irish grandparents, and he has emphasized those Celtic roots in shaping his identity in America. He became a Thatcherite when his pride at passing the 11-plus (British exam at age 11 determining grammar school entry) examination gave way to what he called disgust at Labour's plan to merge his grammar school into a comprehensive; the school went private and sent him to Oxford, where he befriended the historian [Niall Ferguson](https://www.edgepedia.org/niall-ferguson). At Oxford he founded the "Pooh-Sticks Society", took the lead role in the play *Another Country*, rose to president of the [Oxford Union](https://www.edgepedia.org/oxford-union), and was outed as gay by the student paper *Cherwell*, though he remained discreet about his sexuality and retained an ambition to become a Conservative MP.[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html)
After graduating from Oxford with a first, he won a Harkness Fellowship to Harvard and returned there in 1989 to write a doctoral thesis on his favorite philosopher, the Englishman Michael Oakeshott.[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) When he decamped from Oxford to [Cambridge, Massachusetts](https://www.edgepedia.org/cambridge-massachusetts), in 1984, he carried a distinctive brand of conservatism that one *New Yorker* writer described as Thatcherite exuberance leavened by Oakeshottian skepticism.[7](https://www.newyorker.com/news/hendrik-hertzberg/the-sullivanian-persuasion)
## The New Republic and the case for gay marriage
Within a few years of arriving in the United States, Sullivan became editor of *The New Republic*, one of the country's liveliest magazines of political debate, giving him what one interviewer called a high rank in Washington's nomenklatura.[8](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview-andrew-sullivan-mr-gay-right-but-definitely-not-mr-gay-rights-1186482.html) His time as editor was turbulent and left lasting wounds at the publication: while he raised its profile, his decision to run excerpts from *The Bell Curve*, a book that tried to gauge IQ differences among ethnic groups, brought the staff close to outright revolt.[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) The excerpt ran on the cover of the October 31, 1994, issue in a package titled "Race and I.Q.", led with the argument by political scientist Charles Murray and psychologist Richard Herrnstein that [IQ test](https://www.edgepedia.org/iq-test) results are in large part hereditary and reveal differences among races, and produced piles of scientific debunkings; Sullivan has always said that he published but did not embrace it.[9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472) At *The New Republic* he also ran an excerpt from Charles Murray's book and a piece by Elizabeth McCaughey that, though fatally flawed, helped torpedo the Clinton administration's health care reform effort, in the *New Yorker*'s summary of his five "rambunctious" years there.[10](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/andrew-sullivan-dish-closes)
His defining provocation was different. In 1989 he wrote a *New Republic* cover essay framed as "A (Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage", at a time when many LGBTQ activists regarded the idea as a capitulation to heterosexual norms; *Time* credits Sullivan, a journalist rather than an academic, with shoving the issue out of academia and onto the liberal agenda.[2](https://time.com/3937477/how-gay-marriage-won/) • [11](https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/01/07/andrew-sullivan-essays-catholic-mcgarvey-242151/) He had earlier identified the priorities for gay rights as "the two Ms", marriage and the military, in a piece in *The Advocate*, and he developed the case for integration in his 1990s book *Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality*. "When I first started talking about gay marriage, most people in the gay community looked at me as if I was insane or possibly a fascist reactionary," he later said.[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) The gay press accused him of demeaning gay sexuality, while the right loathed his marriage advocacy; he drew fire from virtually every point of the political spectrum.[8](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview-andrew-sullivan-mr-gay-right-but-definitely-not-mr-gay-rights-1186482.html)
## Blogging and The Dish
After departing *The New Republic* in 1996, Sullivan secured a $100,000 yearly deal to write a weekly *Sunday Times* column, and the income let him launch the Dish in 2000; the blog, through its breakneck tempo, open-ended discussion, and full-throttle exposés known as fisking, a form he mastered, played a part in building the political blogosphere.[9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472) The blog moved from Time to *The Atlantic Monthly*, and in 2011 to [The Daily Beast](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-daily-beast) and *Newsweek* under editor [Tina Brown](https://www.edgepedia.org/tina-brown); by then it had an audience of 1.3 million and published about 240 posts a week, some days accounting for more than half of the visitors to TheAtlantic.com.[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) • [12](https://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/pdf/2011/05-pdfs/0511-HarvardMag.pdf)
In 2013 he struck out on his own, asking readers to fund the blog directly at $19.99 a year, which he marketed as "about a nickel a day", with no advertising. In the first 24 hours the site raised $330,000 toward a $900,000 annual target, supporting an editorial team of seven.[5](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html) He shut the Dish in 2015, citing the personal toll of nonstop publishing.[10](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/andrew-sullivan-dish-closes)
His blog years also shaped electoral politics. His 2007 *Atlantic* cover story "Why Obama Matters" appeared while many Democrats were on the fence about the Illinois senator and helped sway elite opinion and money his way; when the Dish went behind a paywall in 2013, a White House aide passed on President Obama's complaint that he was locked out of a favorite blog, and Sullivan set up a special account for him.[9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472)
## New York Magazine, Substack, and the Trump era
Sullivan began a weekly column at New York magazine in 2016, in which he described Donald Trump's rise as an "extinction level event" for American democracy, and he was among the early anti-Trump conservative voices.[9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472) In the Trump era he increasingly used the column to criticize the American left, and in July 2020, after four years at the magazine, he resigned, claiming that a "critical mass" of staff no longer wanted to associate with him because of his critiques of critical theory and woke culture. His departure came the same week as [Bari Weiss](https://www.edgepedia.org/bari-weiss)'s resignation from *The New York Times*, amid turmoil in American newsrooms over ideological conformity.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/18/anti-trump-british-journalist-quits-new-york-magazine-in-woke-row)
He moved to the newsletter platform Substack, charging readers directly. He said his income rose from less than $200,000 to around $500,000 as a result of the move, and he emphasized that he had not been "canceled". "I just think it's a shame that readers of mainstream newspapers and magazines can't hear a dissent," he told the journalist Ben Smith.[9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472) The newsletter, The Weekly Dish, offers weekly columns, reader dissents, and podcast discussions, and Media Bias/Fact Check rates it Right-Center with high factual reporting, noting that Sullivan critiques left-wing cultural trends and identity politics while holding moderate-to-liberal positions on social tolerance, civil liberties, and democratic pluralism.[3](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/andrew-sullivan-the-weekly-dish-bias-and-credibility/) In 2021 he told *60 Minutes* that American political discourse needed rescuing, and he argued that a Democrat who combined support for transgender dignity with limits on medical intervention for children and an end to what he called wokeness would win.[4](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-sullivan-60-minutes-2021-11-14/) • [13](https://thefederalist.com/2026/02/16/andrew-sullivan-is-a-trump-supporter-but-as-with-most-things-political-he-just-doesnt-know-it/)
## Political position
Sullivan's politics resist easy classification. He still prefers flatter taxes, a smaller state, entitlements based on need, and doubt about affirmative action based on race; yet, as Hendrik Hertzberg sees it, the causes that most absorb him lean liberal rather than conservative: rejecting torture, rejecting what he calls neocon fantasies of omnipotence, rejecting religious fundamentalism, rejecting the death penalty, and rejecting a national-security state without limits, together with a faith in secular governance, a sufficient social safety net, science, and marriage equality, "which he practically invented".[7](https://www.newyorker.com/news/hendrik-hertzberg/the-sullivanian-persuasion) He renounced his initial support for the Iraq war and became a merciless critic of movement conservatism; the torture report author Daniel Jones said Sullivan's work helped lead America away from torture.[7](https://www.newyorker.com/news/hendrik-hertzberg/the-sullivanian-persuasion) • [9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472) His friend [Johann Hari](https://www.edgepedia.org/johann-hari) once wrote that he is "happiest at war with his own side".[9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472)
His legacy is contested. A 2026 assessment in *The South Asian Insider* called him arguably the single most influential journalist of the past 50 years, crediting him with helping bring about same-sex marriage through sustained persuasion and with pioneering the stand-alone, one-writer subscription model.[14](https://www.thesouthasianinsider.com/images/212202611181820February2026-SAI.pdf) Critics point instead to the *Bell Curve* episode and to race-related controversies that followed him for nearly 30 years, including a 2020 dispute over an arch note he sent to a "1619 Project" author, which framed criticism of his later writing.[4](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-sullivan-60-minutes-2021-11-14/) • [9](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472)
## References
1. [Andrew Sullivan Media Bias, AllSides](https://www.allsides.com/news-source/andrew-sullivan-media-bias)
2. [How Gay Marriage Won, Time](https://time.com/3937477/how-gay-marriage-won/)
3. [Andrew Sullivan – The Weekly Dish – Bias and Credibility, Media Bias/Fact Check](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/andrew-sullivan-the-weekly-dish-bias-and-credibility/)
4. [Andrew Sullivan on American political discourse and rescuing conservatism in 2021, 60 Minutes, CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-sullivan-60-minutes-2021-11-14/)
5. [Andrew Sullivan: Has this blogger just proved that a lone voice can make big money online?, The Independent](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/profiles/andrew-sullivan-has-this-blogger-just-proved-that-a-lone-voice-can-make-big-money-online-8439156.html)
6. [Anti-Trump British journalist quits New York Magazine in 'woke' row, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/18/anti-trump-british-journalist-quits-new-york-magazine-in-woke-row)
7. [The Sullivanian Persuasion, The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/news/hendrik-hertzberg/the-sullivanian-persuasion)
8. [Interview: Andrew Sullivan: Mr Gay Right but definitely not Mr Gay Rights, The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview-andrew-sullivan-mr-gay-right-but-definitely-not-mr-gay-rights-1186482.html)
9. [No room for mavericks: One-of-a-kind thinker Andrew Sullivan falls from favor over race issues, Star Tribune](https://www.startribune.com/no-room-for-mavericks-one-of-a-kind-thinker-andrew-sullivan-falls-from-favor-over-race-issues/572321472)
10. [Andrew Sullivan Shuts a Door, The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/andrew-sullivan-dish-closes)
11. [Andrew Sullivan's writing on faith, sexuality and culture wars, America Magazine](https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/01/07/andrew-sullivan-essays-catholic-mcgarvey-242151/)
12. [Profile of Andrew Sullivan, blogger supreme, Harvard Magazine](https://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/pdf/2011/05-pdfs/0511-HarvardMag.pdf)
13. [Andrew Sullivan Is A Trump Supporter. He Just Doesn't Know It, The Federalist](https://thefederalist.com/2026/02/16/andrew-sullivan-is-a-trump-supporter-but-as-with-most-things-political-he-just-doesnt-know-it/)
14. [The South Asian Insider, February 2026](https://www.thesouthasianinsider.com/images/212202611181820February2026-SAI.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Broadcasting and journalism › Periodicals and publishing › Journalism › Journalists (biographies and roles) › Columnists and opinion journalists*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license