| DJ,
I don't doubt that he understood it was illegal, but that's not really the point. And I understand your point that it is a human life, but this all points back to my arguement in the other thread that you shouldn't be having sex until you've committed yourself to a relationship and the responsibilities associated with one.
Back to the topic at hand. It's not like this guy was selling his daughter into slavery. He was selling her to a family that wanted a child of their own. I think the reason I'm not as upset by this as you are is that I don't see this as treating a child as a commodity. I see the money as a convenience fee. Think about it this way... if you go into a grocery store and buy popcorn that you have to take home and cook yourself, you will pay much less than if you buy popcorn at the movies. Why? Because they have cooked it for you and have it ready for you at the place you want to eat it at (the movies). You are paying more for the convenience of getting what you want in an easy and timely manner. You are not paying for the popcorn itself, you are paying for the way that it is given to you.
I see this situation in a similar way. The family wasn't paying because they wanted to own a child. They were paying so they could skip the red tape associated with a formal adoption process and the lengthy delays in getting a child. They were interested enough in having a child they were willing to pay (sacrifice money) in order to speed up the process. The father was getting payment for offering that convenience. The process itself is what is dictating the payment, not ownership of the child. The child would not be property to the new parents, she would have been a member of the family.
I see this as very different from selling a child as property or as a slave. Because of that difference in opinion I am not as emotional or appalled by the situation as you seem to be.
And the point that Lestat and I both keep coming back to is that we don't know what the motivation of the situation was. We don't know everything that was going on, and until we can know for sure what really happened, we're not ready to just cast the guy to the wolves.  |