EHarmony agrees to service gay people, sort of

Posted on November 23, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized

The evangelical-founded internet dating site eHarmony has agreed to launch a same-sex dating service as part of the settlement of a discrimination action brought against it in 2005.

But the notoriously heterosexual eHarmony site will not allow same-sex searches. Instead people looking for same-sex relationships on eHarmony will be directed to a gay-only site called Compatiblepartners, away from the company’s homepage. Any money users pay to the new site will only enrich an organization with a terrible record of discrimination against gay people.

Eric McKinley, a 46-year-old New Jersey resident who tried to use eHarmony to meet other gay men filed a complaint against the company under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination, saying he was refused service because the site caters exclusively to heterosexual people. In 2007 the Division on Civil Rights of New Jersey’s Attorney General’s Office found that eHarmony had violated New Jersey discrimination laws. The case was pending when the settlement was announced.

For years eHarmony has denied gay, lesbian and bisexual people the use of its matchmaking services. Company founder and self-identified evangelical Christian, Neil Clark Warren, claimed in 2005 that because there’s no gay marriage in most US states, the company would not “participate in something that’s illegal.” In a 2007 statement the company claimed the restriction on same-sex services is because the techniques it uses to match couples are based only on research into heterosexual partnerships.

Warren, a clinical psychologist, has ties to the socially conservative group Focus on the Family, which was an active supporter of the recent Yes on 8 campaign in California that effectively removed same-sex marriage rights in that state.

Under the settlement eHarmony agrees to allow same-sex searches through its personals site by Mar 31, 2009.

But instead of incorporating the option to search for same-sex partners on eHarmony, the company plans to launch Compatiblepartners. The tag line on the site’s placeholder page reads, “The site for long-term committed relationships.” The words “gay” or “same-sex” did not appear anywhere on the site as this story was filed. See more of EHarmony agrees to service gay people, sort of
Xtra.ca, Canada