I was recently scrolling through Twitter when I came across a tweet that said this: “friendly reminder that no matter how important an election is, it’s not more important than your friendships and relationships. Be kind. Don’t let politics come before people.”

I would say it’s a nice thought, but it’s not. It’s lazy thinking. And it’s something that’s really easy to say when the results of the election will have zero consequences on your life.

The unfortunate reality of our current political climate is that we aren’t disputing politics anymore so much as right and wrong. I will be happy to fiercely disagree with you over immigration quotas and economic policies and then go get coffee afterwards as friends. However, if you try and tell me that immigration reform needs to include stealing immigrant children from their parents or a biased and illogical Muslim ban, then we aren’t arguing about politics anymore, we’re arguing about human rights. 

I’m a straight, white, middle-class woman, and listen, I get it. Paying attention to all the bad things going on in our country right now is draining and no one wants to do it. It’s so much easier to turn off the news or turn a blind eye when what’s happening doesn’t affect you. But for a majority of people in America, making the choice to ignore politics is not an option.

For example, let’s look at Iowa’s very own, Steve King. He doesn’t want to allow gay people to marry. You can’t vote for him because you like his economic plan, and pretend like you aren’t also voting for someone who would strip marriage rights away from over 9 million Americans if he could, and then expect your gay peers to brush it off as a “political disagreement.” Simply put, that’s not about politics anymore.

I realize that unlike Steve King, a lot of candidates fall in the gray area, and compromises have to be reached. The point of this column is not to persuade you to vote for specific candidates, nor is it to argue that it’s OK to destroy relationships over politics. The point is that sometimes what you pass off as “politics” are really bigger issues about rights, equality and justice.

And the point is that it’s really easy to brush off such things as politics when your rights aren’t on the line. Reproductive rights for women; eradicating white supremacy; equality for transgender men and women; voting rights for Native Americans — these issues should not be decided on the political field, they should be decided in each person’s heart. And disagreeing with someone over them doesn’t mean you have differing political views, it means you have differing views on humanity.

So please, let’s make politics boring again. Let’s have political races between candidates who disagree on tax plans and prison reform, not on whether transgender people legally exist or if Mexico is sending us rapists. Be kind to people, yes, but don’t use your kindness to avoid addressing the fact that your friend is a racist. That’s not how we solve problems in America. We solve them by being honest with each other, with communicating, and occasionally calling each other out for having terrible beliefs.

And ultimately, having those hard conversations with each other is what it will take to pull our country out of the nightmare it’s in right now. Just don’t reveal to someone that you voted for a white supremacist or sexual predator and then be surprised when they use that to make a judgement about your character. Voting for a white supremacist doesn’t mean you have different political beliefs than me, it means you are supporting a white supremacist.

Politics isn’t supposed to be high-stakes like this, it’s supposed to be boring. Let’s make it boring again.