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Home › Relationships

Relationships | 11/20/2008 8:30 am

eHarmony Will Allow Gays to Join

By The Staff at wowOwow.com
Coming Soon: "Male Seeking Male" and "Female Seeking Female"

Gays can soon join eHarmony, the online dating service that once only served heterosexual interests.

This comes after a settlement agreement in the case of Eric McKinley, a gay man from New Jersey. In 2005, McKinley filed a discrimination suit against the online dating service company after the site refused to accept his same-sex personal ad. Under terms of the agreement with New Jersey’s Civil Rights Division, beginning March 31, 2009, users will be able to identify themselves as a male seeking a male or a female seeking a female. This is currently not an option on eHarmony. The first 10,000 same-sex registrants will receive a free six-month subscription.

The settlement also states that eHarmony can create a new or differently named website geared to homosexuals. The founder of the match-making website is reportedly refusing to comment. Eharmony was founded by psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who’s known for his strong evangelical Christian beliefs.

Eharmony is now following the pack of other dating websites that welcome all sexual preferences. Last April, Chemistry.com launched a mega-million-dollar advertising campaign that featured people who came to them after being "rejected by eHarmony." Their slogan is "Come as you are," and is directed to customers who found eHarmony to be too traditional. This included gays, lesbians and people with religions other than Christianity.

Also according to the settlement, Dr. Warren has to provide the man who sued him, McKinley, a free one-year membership. Maybe now McKinley will find the man of his dreams.

Here are the terms of the settlement.

Read more about: Dating, Homosexuality, Lifestyle, News, Online Dating, Relationships, Society

5 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

f p
Golly gee ain’t that big of them. Evangelical Christians—how would Christ deal with them?
By f p on 11/20/2008 10:29 am
Diana T
I remember looking into eharmony once. Went through all of this big questionnaire and found out back then that you were really supposed to communicate with your “chosen” one without first seeing a picture. Can you imagine doing that? I guess it’s different now. Back then, I thought it was awfully expensive to have this control freak do the chosing. Then I read that he was an Evangelical, and got out. No matter; internet dating service never worked for me anyway.
By Diana T on 11/20/2008 12:53 pm
Belinda Joy
I had no idea E-harmony was discriminating against Gays…..wow. I’m going to have to do some research into the founder of the site to get a sense of how he believed in today’s day and age he could openly discriminate in this regard.
By Belinda Joy on 11/20/2008 11:52 am
Donna H
A couple of years ago, there were rumors that eHarmony was a Christian site founded to match up evangelical & fundamentalist Christians. Members of two online communities I belong to- one Jewish, one Pagan, decided to test the rumor. Both were informal, neither was any sort of attempt to be a “study”. In both, some claimed to be of different faiths. There were questions about religion; people who checked the “Jewish” box were asked which branch they belonged to & about their level of observance. In both examples, any who claimed not to be Christian were told (this is NOT a direct quote, it’s what I remember) that unfortunately, they were among the “about 20%” of all applicants who couldn’t be matched.
By Donna H on 11/20/2008 3:09 pm
Sandbee (FB) 54
I’m not gay and I’m not single but it doesn’t sound like a site I would want to use if I were trying to find a match on-line. Too much prejudice involved in the thinking of the people who decide how you are chosen for your mates. And from what Diana says, if you are not given a picture, which hopefully you could trust, that would be scary.
By Sandbee (FB) 54 on 11/20/2008 5:37 pm