For a lot of people the divide seems to be "If I think it's important then it's an important aspect of life that needs to be talked about and if I don't care about it then it's 'just politics' and should be kept out of most things".

This totally gets my goat, that mainstream, majority political/moral/social positions are somehow considered "neutral" and "default" and everything else is considered "politicized." This is exactly how prevailing power structures hide from sight and remove themselves from public discourse. When gays and trans* people are erased in favor of heteronormative gender binaries, that most definitely is a political and moral statement yet the practice hides behind the veil of normality and inures itself from criticism. It's like straight people have no sexuality, as Jackson Katz once said. (He was building on the work of female feminists, as he fully acknowledged, yet he's the one I remember and quote just as he predicted. I am most certainly not immune from prevailing social attitudes and assumptions. That's why these systems of thought are so scary, you look it straight in the face and it still gets you.)