Comments on: eHarmony now loves gay people. Really.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:18:54 +0000

This is an absolute disgrace. Will someone be suing KFC next for not selling hamburgers? eHarmony should have suspended all business until this situtation could have been properly resolved. Shame on Dr. Warren for going down without a fight.

By: Silas

Silas — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:23:03 +0000

DON’T TRUST THEM…I WILL NOT EVER TRUST THEM

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:35:23 +0000

Have you looked at the pictures on compatiblepartners.net? The affectionate, coupled people are turned away from the camera as if to indicate that there is something wrong with same-sex affection or closeness. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:54:01 +0000

If even a company run by a conservative christian, sponsor a gay tv show and offer deals to gay clients, then maybe he thinks that gay people are people too.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:26:14 +0000

What ever happened to finding love the old fashion way? Still, this is one of those “seperate but equal” rulings as a result by bigotry.

By: Kay

Kay — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:48:40 +0000

I could care less if eHarmony was forced into doing it, but I am rather bothered by the separate site and its title. This is totally inconvenient for nonmonosexual people, as the article points out. Furthermore, the site name “Compatible Partners” has a pretty LGBT-alienating connotation to it, especially since this is intended to cater to the LGBT community.

By: Joey

Joey — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:15:30 +0000

Funny how they crawn back to us in an economic downturn, I wonder what it will be like when its over.

By: inhighspeed

inhighspeed — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:49:15 +0000

The separate but equal aspect of this is disturbing. This is a bad, sad solution.

By: Aiden Raccoon

Aiden Raccoon — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:34:21 +0000

This isn’t a site I would ever go to and even though I am really adamant about equal rights, I don’t really care about eHarmony offering their services to us. Now this lawsuit was taken up back in ‘05, well before the big gay rights rallies of recent months. I would never use it but there are conservative Christian gays who would be perfect for eHarmony.

By: Patrick Perrine

Patrick Perrine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:45:09 +0000

We are here, we are queer…and yes, we are different. To ignore the differences between gay daters and that of heterosexual daters is just, well, ignorant. There are sites like ManHunt.net that serve a particular need for the gay male community, and there are also sites like myPartner.com that serve a different need. In both cases, we are both designed to cater to what gay men are specifically looking for in a partnership. I don’t think lesbian women would want to use either of the sites mentioned, and if they did, I know myPartner.com’s matching system wouldn’t work to provide compatible matches the way it is currently designed. They are a different segment of the population with different needs and wants.

Whether one agrees with fundamentalist Christians or not (even though I believe Harmony has stepped away from this association) they are a niche population that deserves to be catered to as well. The straight demographic just happens to be the popular majority…but that doesn’t mean it’s not a distinctively different niche.

By eHarmony.com choosing to avoid, or simply not acknowledging, the differences between gay and straight daters on their new site they are essentially homogenizing distinctively different populations of people, which can be (and definitely will be by some) perceived as being offensive.

Niche products, as Mark Brooks stated in his LA Time interview, are those that “serve it specifically”. I think the disclaimer on Compatible Partners says it all:

“The Company’s patented Compatibility Matching System was developed on the basis of research involving married heterosexual couples. The Company has not conducted similar research on same-sex relationships.”

While I believe their methodology to be sound for heterosexual daters, their disclaimer won’t simply “make it work”, just as our matching system on http://www.myPartner.com would be flawed for lesbian or straight daters. myPartner.com’s matching system was designed by gay men, for gay men, and addresses areas of importance to the gay dater in a way that eHarmony’s does not (ex: gender roles, past relationship experiences, sexual preferences, relationship dynamics and partner roles, comfort with one’s own sexuality and how it manifests in their ability to establish a relationship, etc).

Partner selection is not a one size fits all! We launched myPartner.com almost two years ago because so many gay men were looking for a comprehensive service similar to that of eHarmony’s. One that catered to them specifically. While eHarmony is one of the elephants in the room, patronizing the community with a “gay” branded copy of itself will most likely not win the gay and lesbian population over. And I am not sure it should as we are not the population their methodology is intended to serve…