Who Owns You?

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Me: Who owns you?
Baby Anarchist (10): Me. I own me.
Me: Can someone else sell you?
BA: No.
Me: Why not?
BA: A living person is his own property.
Me: Can someone else rightfully take away your life if you are being peaceful?
BA: There’s no rightful way to encroach on a peaceful person.
Me: Can someone else rightfully stop you from peacefully owning your rightfully acquired property?
BA: No. No one can stop you from keeping the thing you have peacefully gotten. If you’ve earned it, traded for it, been given it as a gift, it’s yours.
Me: Can someone else rightfully stop you from making a peaceful contract with another person?
BA: Nope. You’re peacefully doing it. It’s not hurting anyone. There’s no reason they should stop you.
Me: So no one is allowed to take away your right to make contracts?
BA: No one is allowed to take away your right to make contracts. You own you. No one can take away your right to enter into contracts.
Me: Did you know that years ago it was illegal for black persons to enter into marriage contracts with white persons?
BA: During slavery?
Me: After slavery. When they acknowledged that people were not the property of other people.
BA: That doesn’t make sense. If you are your own property then you can enter into contracts.
Me: If someone else can stop you from entering into a contract what does that make you?
YS (14): A slave.
Me: Is yesterday’s decision (2015 Supreme Court decision regarding marriage equality) about love, son?
YS: it’s about self ownership.
Me: Why did it have to be couched as a decision about love?
YS: Because people won’t respond to self ownership.
Me: Why don’t they want to hear that they don’t have self ownership?
YS: It’s complicated and bad.
Me: Love is nicer but the reality is people who own themselves are not denied the right to enter into peaceful contracts that don’t encroach on others.