EHarmony dating service has been bullied into offering their services to gay people. You know how it starts. A lawsuit is filed or a state commission opens an investigation and then comes the threat. The threat is that the persecution will persist and you’ll go broke fighting us so you might as well give us what we want.
According to World Net Daily:
Internet dating service eHarmony has officially agreed to begin matching homosexual couples, beginning next year.
The popular California-based service has been known for focusing on long-term relationships, especially marriage, which has been said to align with founder Clark Warren’s early work with Focus on the Family’s evangelical Christian base and perspective.
Warren, a psychologist with a divinity degree, has had three of his 10 books on love and dating published by Focus on the Family. It was an appearance on James Dobson’s radio program, in 2001, that triggered a response of 90,000 new referrals to the website, starting a climb of registered participants on the site from 4,000 to today’s 20 million clients.
As WND reported, the company originally said it was “based on the Christian principles of Focus on the Family author Dr. Neil Clark Warren.” It stood firm on its decision to reject homosexuals from its profiling and matching services. Its entire compatibility system is based on research of married heterosexual couples.
In 2005, Warren told USA Today the company’s goal is marriage and that same-sex marriage is illegal in most states.
“We don’t really want to participate in something that’s illegal,” he said.
But now the company has been compelled to changed its nationwide policy as part of a New Jersey lawsuit settlement.
On March 14, 2005, Eric McKinley filed a lawsuit against eHarmony, claiming the company discriminated against him when it refused to accept his advertisement for a “gay” partner.
McKinley’s complaint triggered a state investigation into the dating service.
Last week, eHarmony agreed to begin providing an eHarmony-affiliated “Compatible Partners” service to gays and lesbians, with listings labeled “male seeking male” and “female seeking female” by March 31, 2009.
For complying, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights has dismissed the complaint against eHarmony, and Warren is considered “absolved of liability.” Also, the dating site has been ordered to pay the division $50,000 for investigation-related administrative costs and give McKinley $5,000. It has agreed to provide a free one-year membership to its “gay” service to McKinley, plus free six-month memberships to “the first 10,000 users registering for same-sex matching within one year of the initiation on the same-sex matching service,” according to the settlement.
You’ve got to love it. The bullies kick the company around so much until the company starts apologizing for getting blood on the bully’s kicking boots. And then the bullies kick a little more until the company offers to pay for new kicking boots. It’s a disgrace.
The moral of this is that morals are disallowed from the public sphere and if you don’t like it, say something. They dare you. Because you might be next.
November 20, 2008 at 5:57 pm
There difference is obvious. It’s not about requiring a company to do business with someone, it’s about asking a business to change its product to accommodate someone.
November 20, 2008 at 8:12 pm
There difference is obvious. It’s not about requiring a company to do business with someone, it’s about asking a business to change its product to accommodate someone.
Actually, if I understand the matter, it’s not about asking a business to do anything. It’s about telling them they must do something they had not wished to do – and threatening them with an ‘or else!’
That doesn’t make me think of the word ‘freedom.’
jj
November 20, 2008 at 9:07 pm
You’re right, John. I was being too polite by saying that they are “asking” for the change.
November 20, 2008 at 11:37 pm
What would you realistically expect eHarmony to do that they could get away with?
Other than shut down. And who would that help?
Applying your logic to my own home state (In Australia), Catholic hospitals have been ordered to provide abortion services or at least direct and ‘effective’ referrals to an abortion service. So your logic would suggest that the Catholics build a ‘seperate’ building where they can formally cooperate in evil abortions so that they can still do the good work in the rest of the hospital. After all, it’s only a little bit of murder to tolerate for a good cause isn’t it?
November 21, 2008 at 12:12 am
Reveation 13:7
It was allowed to wage war against the saints and to conquer them.
It = queers.
November 21, 2008 at 3:20 am
Peter:
Has Cardinal Pell told the Government to sod off yet?
November 21, 2008 at 3:27 am
Yeah, that’s my logic. Truth is, I just don’t get as excited about this stuff as I do abortion. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if the new business line fails. What can the court do, order it to turn a profit?
Which is why I think they’ll appeal. That’s my logic too.
November 21, 2008 at 3:55 am
An unjust law is not a law.
November 21, 2008 at 4:47 pm
There shouldn’t be a “compatible partners” site. It ought to be
wgud3figty36k5fddhsxngktleelsogn23djfgutysckg2hlgojo23gid.com
He also ought to set it up to make sure that gays who use the site get the exact opposite of what they are looking for. There is no guarantee of quality, because they haven’t done any research on what gays want.
So they ought to make it hard to type, impossible to find on a search engine and make is suck.
Try suing them for that!
November 29, 2008 at 6:52 am
1. I am a lesbian.
2. Frankly, I don’t care if gay marriage ever passes. I believe that marriage is a promise that cannot be broken. You speak those words, and make that commitment with only one thought in mind, “til death do us part”.
What does bother me, is how individuals can be so bullheaded about the “Sanctity” of marriage when there is a preponderance of DIVORCE in the USA.
When two people who just met 5 minutes prior can walk up, no, DRIVE UP to a chapel and for a small chunk of change, get married, I’d say there is no sanctity. I would like THAT outlawed if there is any HOPE on saving the Sanctity of Marriage.
Where is your sanctity when 8 out of 10 men say they have cheated on their spouses?
Where is your sanctity when people get married because they “have to”?
Where is your sanctity when people continue to get married based on the sole idea that love is all you need?
The media has made it very conveinient to fall in love and get married. Thereby also making divorce an even easier reality.
Indeed, love is NOT all you need. There must be compassion, communication, understanding and a willingness to fight the battles together, and not run at the first sign of a problem.
We aren’t taught to look past the horse-drawn carriage and Prince Charming in the white castle to what lies ahead. We are a society happy with the here and now. This is also why we have the highest credit debt and obesity per capita, but don’t let me go off on that tangent.
3. It was only in the past 100 years that I recall women were allowed to vote, being that they were inferior and according to the Bible, should not have a voice.
I just wanted to say that most of you are correct in stating that eHarmony should not be foreced to provide a gay website. That is why there is freedom of choice.
I just had to correct a few of your misconceptions of reality while I was agreeing with you on that.
Ciao!
November 29, 2008 at 12:40 pm
As a gay Catholic, I want to weigh in on obligating eHarmony to open a gay dating service. I think it’s wrong. It violates basic market principles, even without appealing to morality.
I do have a question, though, for many of the posters here. I detect not just opposition to a policy but hate. Please don’t tell me you ‘love’ homosexuals. That’s a crock if you do not also LIKE homosexuals. How many of you count gay men and/or women as friends…as persons you go out to lunch with, people whose lives you know, with whom you’ve dialogued. That is the essence of Christian love.
November 29, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Kevin: Disagreeing with, or disapproving of, the choices of another, is not the same thing as hating them. For what it’s worth, I’ve had a number of gay friends and associates over the years. Fortunately, we’ve managed to find other things to talk about besides sex.
Speaking the Truth is the essence of love, as St Paul told the Corinthians that love rejoices in it. Hate the sin, love the sinner. It can happen. It happened here.
December 2, 2008 at 5:21 am
Of course, David, but the emphasis should be on loving the sinner. When Jesus ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, I think he loved them into wholeness, not lectured them about their evil ways.
That sounds like precisely what you have done with your gay friends and associates over the years. You avoid lecturing them about their “lifestyle” and love them as individuals. Bravo!