[Darzog]

First off, I'm not saying that the guy is innocence or guilt free. I've never said that what he did was right or even that I think he was justified in doing it.

The points I have beed raising were partially acting as a devil's advocate since everyone was jumping to too much of a reaction based on the information provided and partially because I felt that the wrong aspects of this situation were getting the focus.

In my first post my only point was that what he did with the money was not important. Using the money to make home repairs is actually one of the more innocent things he could have been doing with the money. Had he used the money to pay medical bills or repay a loan or something similar that would have shown that his intent was to get money and he just used his daughter to get it. With the information we have I don't really believe that the money was the driving force, so the focus of people's reactions shouldn't have been on the fact that he was making home repairs.

My second post started by saying that I think people are villifying the guy too much. Not that he wasn't a villain, just that people were making assumptions that might have been painting him in a worse light than he deserved (assuming his intentions were more evil than they were). This is where I was acting as a devil's advocate trying to offer other assumptions about what might have brought the situation about. The article mentions that he owned a nail salon but we don't know how successful it was. Maybe he had to work 12 hours a day and couldn't afford a baby sitter and as a single parent he couldn't hack it. If the situation was changed slightly and an immigrant woman had to work long hours and couldn't afford to give her child a good home, is she evil if she decides to give her baby away (for the moment let's ignore the money and focus on giving the baby away, we'll get to the money next).

You are right that I attach a high value to the responsibility of having children. But my comments in the other thread are pushing for responsibility before you have a child (in a way making sure you don't have a child unless you are ready for it). Once you have the child, if you are not able to provide for it I think that finding it a better home is actually a good thing. I understand that adoption can be very traumatic for the child through their entire life, but in many instances it would be more traumatic to stay with a parent that doesn't want a child or can't provide for them. I don't think adoption is evil, so I don't call this guy evil immediately just because he didn't want to raise his daughter.

Now for the money... in my mind, this is still not the pivital point of the situation. It does muddy the waters some and it does cast a harsher light on the guy, but I still feel that this guy should be judged on why he was giving up his daughter and the money is a smaller piece of the puzzle.

I know this sounds very detatched but getting paid vs. not getting paid doesn't really make this situation evil to me (unless we learn what his motivations were; if they show that the money was more important than his daughter's well being then that tips the scales). Yes it would be better to go through formal channels, yes it is safer for the parents and children, but did the guy really know that? We don't know. And that is really the crux of the matter. We don't know enough to want to lynch this guy.

My personal opinion is that the guy didn't have his daughter's well being as his priority and she should be removed from his household. I think he does deserve punishment. But I also am recognizing that these are based on assumptions and not on the facts. Because we don't know enough facts to really understand the situation having an extreme reaction in either way is not just. It was the extreme reactions based on assumptions that I was responding to; I was not defending the guy. And one other point before I head out... many of the article's comments are intentionally inflammatory but we don't know what the evidence was. We only know how the article decided to spin the situation.