eHarmony as eHomophobic

eHarmony set up its e-dating service with the intention of matching men and women into long-term relationships. By men and women, I mean exclusively heterosexual individuals. "eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had strong early ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family." (link) Forget the millions of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people also looking for some e-love. This discriminitory practice caught the eye of eHarmony's competitor, Chemisty.com.

In a series of television ads, Chemistry.com used the slogan "Over 1 millions people rejected by eHarmony.com." One such ad features a gay man thoroughly looking over Playboy magazine. When he's done flipping through the pages he exclaims, "Nope, still gay." You can watch that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgxOhG2nDOA

At around the same time, individuals and gay advocacy groups began to pursue legal action against the website. In 2007, Linda Carlson brought a class action law suit against eHarmony based on California's anti-discriminitory laws. Just a few weeks ago, the website settled with gay New Jersey citizen Eric McKinley. In the settlement, McKinley dropped his suit against eHarmony in exchange for the website offering its services to LGBT people. eHarmony will launch the new site, entitled "Compatible Partners," by March 31, 2009. (link)

Another good thing for LGBT's interested in e-dating is that eHarmony tends to be the exception rather than the norm. Most sites include the options of "men seeking men" and "women seeking women" when they apply their algorithms for matching singles.