Those of us invested in love can choose, must choose noncooperation. We buy less, we consume less, we take ourselves off the grid despite efforts to force us to remain on it, we politely decline the carrot of state-sanctioned marriage, we dedicate ourselves to friendship as our organizing, bedrock relationship; we study and talk about how to become, in fact, a society of friends. Our quiet, simple lives are invisible sabots tossed into the gears of capitalism.

And yet we want to test ourselves—we need to be tested, even as anyone with a minimal understanding of religion or philosophy understands the impermanence of all material things, especially those created by humans. So we seek our testing in the world of our imaginations; we make commitments; we take vows.

Fenton Johnson, “The Future of Queer”