Sometimes I read things online that make me drop my jaws in sheer amazement-such as the story about the Christian(and I used the word advisedly) dad who advertised for a husband for his allegedly"virgin" daughter(how on Earth does he KNOW that she's never had sex???)

What surprises me is the tone of his ad- it;s as if he was looking for a buyer for a used car at best, or cattle or sheep at worst, rather than not simply a human being with thoughts and feelings of her own but a family member.

We may chuckle nowadays over newspaper ads in the pre-Civil War Deep South of the US blandly offering" darkies" for sale on plantations but how is this ad in any meaningful sense different???

Terry