It’s so hard when the politicization turns around on you: 

In addition to the LGBT veterans’ group, parade organizers this year approved a request to march from Boston Pride, a gay rights group that holds its own parade in June.

The Massachusetts State Council of the Knights of Columbus withdrew from the celebration because the event had “become politicized and divisive,” its leaders said. The Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Harvard announced that its band would not march because OUTVETS had been invited.

Things are never divisive and politicized when nothing changes.

Things are never divisive and politicized then.

As long as nobody in power is upset, then really nobody is upset. Nobody whose opinion matters. Nobody who’s real.

Things are not divisive and politicized when everything happens the way it’s always happened. Things are not disturbed. Everything is neat and tidy. Everything is clean. Everybody knows what to expect. Everybody who matters, that is.

Divisive and politicized is only for the times when somebody asks for something that’s been denied them. That’s divisive. That’s politicized. That disturbs the normal order of business and that upsets everyone who shouldn’t be upset. Everyone who matters.

It is not divisive, or political, to prevent people from marching side by side with people they want to march with. It is only divisive and political to allow it, because that means a religious group or private school band has to give something up.

(That others have been giving something up for years, that others have never had anything to give up in the first place, that’s not divisive or political.)

Divisive isn’t a problem. Politicized isn’t a problem. These aren’t bad things. These are the fires in which new worlds are born, and closing your ears and eyes and holding your breath until you turn blue, refusing to walk side by side down your street with your neighbor, that’s not creating division. That’s realizing you were divided before, and using politics to build a bridge.

A.