>>>Anybody can write an opinion piece. I can't see what might give this more weight than anybody else's opinion piece. And, if he's going to quote definitions, then perhaps he should go the whole way. Instead of "a union between a man and a woman", it should be "a union between a free man and a free woman". In other words, slaves, or indentured people can't marry either. Sorry, doesn't work for me.
>>
>>Actually, some women are being married (and the marriage would probably be pass the article writer's muster) but not as free. They have to be paid for, or their families have to pay for them to get married. In this case, both meanings of "free" equally apply.
>
>In fact, dowries are not that distant in our own culture's past either.


They are not distant at all in other cultures. We get carried away with our up-to-the-nanosecond gizmos and attitudes sometimes and forget that other cultures -- very large ones, not fringe cultures like the Yanamamo -- are not on the same page, not even in the same century. Something Steve Black liked to say (and probably still does) is apt. "Half the world's population has never made a phone call."