Et cetera, etc.

I do not wish to render a picture of utopia that is prescriptive. I want in-stead to connote an ideality—a desire for a thing, or a way, that is not here but is nonetheless desirable, something worth striving for. This desire does not lead to practical politics or even a practical critical practice, because pragmatism has only ever failed us. It is political pragmatism that has led us to a historical moment when the right to serve in the military and the right to participate in the suspect institution of marriage have become the gay movement's major issue.

Get this into your head: if violence were only a thing of the future, if exploitation and oppression never existed on earth, perhaps displays of nonviolence might relieve the conflict. But if the entire regime, even your nonviolent thoughts, is governed by a thousand-year old oppression, your passiveness serves no other purpose but to put you on the side of the oppressors.