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Loading ...eHarmony now loves gay people. Really.
It’s true. After a court settlement in November, 2008, online dating giant eHarmony is coming out with Compatible Partners, a new website offering gay and lesbian members the same chance to find love as heterosexual customers.
And in a move that took that gay agenda and draped it in 1960s game show dressing, a recent episode of the Ellen Degeneres Show unveiled the set of the Game Show Network’s new Newlywed Game, sponsored by eHarmony – not exactly a paragon of gay pride – as the affable host brought her wife Portia De Rossi on to play.
A segment of the Ellen show sponsored by eHarmony? How did it come to this?
Back in 2005, New Jersey man Eric McKinley wanted to experience eHarmony’s much ballyhooed matching methodology. The problem for McKinley was that he was a man looking for a man. And eHarmony’s services are strictly for heterosexual matches. So Eric lodged a complaint with the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, Division of Civil Rights.
After two years of “back and forth, back and forth,” says McKinley, the attorney general found probable cause. At that point, the parties agreed to negotiate toward a settlement. One of the conditions? That eHarmony would agree to provide an option for same-sex connections (McKinley and the first 10,000 to join up get free memberships).
Why would a company, so heaven-bent on promoting traditional marriage, “cave in” to the “gay agenda,” as so many conservative bloggers have alleged? Why didn’t they fight?
“We chose to settle ultimately because litigation outcomes are unpredictable,” says CEO and founding investor Greg Waldorf. “We were at it with New Jersey between 2005-2008 and said, ‘This is a real burden for the company.’ We’re just moving forward with a business that we hope turns out to be successful. ”
Compatible Partners is the settlement’s lovechild – a “what’s good for business” compromise negotiated between a gay partner-seeker and a company not known for its gay-friendliness. What’s unclear is if this unholy alliance is an arranged marriage or shotgun wedding.
It’s no secret that the company’s founder, psychologist Dr. Neil Clark Warren is a born-again Christian. National ad campaigns introduced the grandfatherly Warren boasting of the company’s exclusive ‘29 Dimensions of Compatibility’ to demographics larger than their original Christian following.
From the company’s emergence in 2000, when they first marketed their matchmaking services primarily to fellow Christian websites, Warren credited much of their early ascent to his relationship with evangelical group Focus on the Family and its founder James Dobson.
Inevitably, eHarmony’s growing pains put strain on that relationship, and in 2005, Warren broke from Dobson and Focus on the Family. The break, however, did not signal any change in the company’s policy of exclusively heterosexual match-ups.
While Warren was active in the company, whenever the topic of homosexual clients arose, he would insist that the results gleaned from his compatibility matching system were based solely on research of heterosexual couples. Competitor Chemistry.com launched their own ad campaign, “Rejected by eHarmony,” poking fun at the Christian matchmaker’s rejection of all types of folks.
Warren, 74, retired from active management in 2006 yet still sits on the board, today. Interestingly, under his watch, the company began offering spouse and domestic partnership benefits to their employees back in 2004. It took the threat of a lawsuit, however, for the company to offer the “benefits” of their patented algorithms to the general public.
After so many years of claiming that their 29 Dimensions were not compatible with homosexuality, how will the company convince people that suddenly, their system will work?
Current CEO Waldorf is “very hopeful that this will work just as well in the gay community. I think that anyone who says that they’re interested in a serious relationship,” he says, “will benefit from [our] deep compatibility matching.”
Next page: Working out the quirks
Hmmm. A separate site for gays and lesbians. Not the inclusion of us on their main site, but a completely different one, just for us. Do they have separate water fountains and bathrooms in their offices for us, too?
I thought this was a waste of energy from the beginning. If I were looking for love on the internets, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with straight people on gay.com or bear411.com.
Let the straights have their hook up site and focus energy and resources on more important things
Better yet, lets do it like in the old days and meet your partner in the dark corner of a Gay bar
Everyone else:
They’re making efforts to be more gay-friendly… We should be encouraging that thinking rather than whining about their past.
We won’t win our enemies over if have a policy of giving our former enemies the cold shoulder.
If Focus on the Family decided to start considering gay relationships acceptable, would we shun them as well, even if they’ve started working to our benefit?
We must be willing to accept and embrace our enemies when they come over to our side. If we do anything else we will never get our rights.
Chris: The site just launched… I imagine that it will take a few weeks to reach a critical mass of users before it will be able to effectively match people.
I swear to God I thought this was an April Fool’s article!
Obviously they know nothing about gay men. Nowhere does it ask if you are a top or a bottom??!?!?! lol
I’m sorry but who would want to use their service given their history of bigotry. Stupid crap lawsuits for match making websites is just another reason to give those who want to deny us civil rights the excuse to claim that we will do the same to churches who refuse to marry us. As if there aren’t other ways to find a partner, now this company will get our dollars when instead the initiative to create a gay friendly site by a member of our community could have keep our queer dollars amongst those who stand with us, rather than against us. But that’s just my opinion.
I wouldn’t spend a dime on that pos.
This company will probably have to be dissolved before they get rid of all their homophobic ethos, which transpires in every inch of their work. If you’re on the compatible partners website and choose a member of the opposite gender on the drop down menu, you’re automatically redirected to the eHarmony website. The reverse doesn’t happen. If you’re on the eHarmony website and choose a member of your own gender on the drop down menu, nothing happens.
Considering eHarmony’s roots, it will be interesting to see the outcome of this, especially if it starts to make a lot of money and how will their attitude change. Will they have the guts to advertise it on mainstream TV?
Besides, it looks to me like Karma.
I disagree with the guy who sued E-Harmony. There are more than enough viable options to E-Harmony that ARE gay friendly and way more deserving of our patronage. IMO this was a battle not worth fighting. The only plus is that an anti-gay company got even more of a black eye.
Just took the quiz, and have been told that I’m not compatible with anyone. I don’t really know what to think about that.
Any ideas?
Who needs this from EHarmony when it’s clear they are only capitulating? It would be different if they came on saying they’d had a burst of enlightenment and had been all wrong about homosexuality. If it’s clear that a private organization is anti-gay, there’s no benefit to anyone by twisting their arms until they pretend to be gay friendly. It’s not like they’re a public utility that controlls everyone’s capability of finding a partner.
> and what about trans-persons looking for partners?
Yeah, and how about Eunichs?
While there is eharmony.ca for Canadians, the only two choices they offer are “Man seeking a woman” and “Woman seeking a man”. There is no compatiblepartners.ca website for Canadians, nor is there any information on the eharmony.ca page about seeking a same-sex partner. Their diversity link has no information about same-sex partners. When I complained about this months ago, they referred me to their case in the US, but now that case has been resolved, their Canadian site remains the same. Canada prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, so this is apparently just as illegal in Canada as it was in the US.