A lifelong Democrat reflects on the hardest box he’s ever checked.

I wasn’t expecting Boy George to play any role in a deeply personal political decision.

Last week, the former Culture Club frontman released We Will Dance Again, a song honoring the victims of the October 7 Hamas massacre and expressing his solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people. The reaction was immediate and predictable. Admirers praised him. Critics accused him of betraying progressive values. Social media did what social media always does.

But it wasn’t really the song that stayed with me. It was the courage behind it. The willingness to say something he knew would disappoint many people who had long assumed he was on their side. That kind of courage seems increasingly rare—not because people lack convictions, but because expressing them sometimes comes with a price.

Watching Boy George reminded me that there comes a moment when conviction matters more than comfort—when saying what you believe becomes more important than remaining in good standing with your own tribe.

Earlier this week, Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic primary for the United States Senate. His victory wasn’t the reason for my decision. It was the moment I finally stopped pretending my decision hadn’t already been made.

After spending virtually my entire adult life as a Democrat, I have decided to change my voter registration in Massachusetts to Independent.

I made this decision not in anger, but with sadness. One election did not drive me from the Democratic Party. One candidate did not suddenly change my politics. If that were true, I would have left years ago. This decision has been building inside me for a long time. The Michigan primary simply forced me to acknowledge what I had been reluctant to admit, even to myself.

The Democratic Party no longer feels like home. I never imagined I would write those words.

To understand why that sentence was so difficult to write, you have to understand what being a Democrat once meant to me.

I came of age politically during Watergate. I admired George McGovern, later volunteered on Barney Frank’s first congressional campaign, and celebrated Barack Obama’s election. Even when I disagreed with Democratic leaders—and there were many times that I did—I never questioned where I belonged.

I wasn’t a Democrat because I agreed with every policy or every candidate. I was a Democrat because I believed the party represented something larger than itself. It championed civil rights, religious liberty, pluralism, and the belief that Americans from every background could build a common democratic future. It believed government could improve people’s lives without becoming the center of them. It believed that immigration and pluralism wasn’t a weakness to be tolerated, but a strength to be celebrated.

For most of my........

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