Is it right to subject minority rights to a public vote?

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Houston, Texas, has just shown the folly of allowing the the rights of a minority - in this case transgender people - to be put before the general public. A campaign of deliberate misinformation and scare tactics defeated "Proposition 1" by a large majority, thus forcing people who are dressed as women, and behave like women in nearly every respect, to use male public toilets, with all the embarrassment this could cause them. This vote has also overturned measures that would have benefitted the gay and transgender population of Houston in many other ways, as well as protections against discrimination based on sex, race, age, religion and other categories. This has all come about because of the nonsense of placing such decisions before the general public in an "all or nothing" referendum. Surely it would have been far better for the elected authority in Houston to do the job it was elected to do - namely to make decisions that benefit the whole community, including all its minorities.