eHarmony settles with New Jersey Attorney General:
Okay. I understand this is an issue of equal public accomodation in it's thrust. What I fail to understand is why is the solution to force eHarmony to build a business entity it's owners aren't comfortable with? eHarmony settled rather than go through litigation, though they've been sued before by a lesbian and by a guy who was married (admittedly, getting divorced) and wanted to start spouse-shopping again.
So, even though there are gay-oriented match-making services, and there are many other match-making services which don't care that much about your marital status, we have to compel eHarmony to build such a service, because we want to use eHarmony, by golly, and they shouldn't let us not use it.
It's a matter of where can we draw the lines? You can make an analogy that excluding gays from eHarmony is similar to excluding blacks from Harvard, and is a denial of equal opportunity.
But where does that sort of logic end? Can I now sue a vegetarian restaurant who's cuisine I really like to serve meat - or open a separate restaurant that offers meat? Can I sue Ford to make a car that I want made, that they have no plan to produce? Can I sue CAIR because they don't offer Christian and Jewish literature? Can I sue the producers of finely embellished Bibles and compel them to produce a Koran? Oh, and get it free, too, btw, if I'm one of the lucky 10,000 visitors in the next 10 minutes?
Mind you - there can be economic incentives to serve the underserved market - and Mr. McKinley probably could have gotten very rich if he'd figured out a way to produce an eHarmony that met that filled that niche. But no, he's now entitled to get that service for free. But I don't really think that he's made the public space any better.
I'm waiting for him to sue gay-oriented websites to provide mirrored services for heterosexuals. And I can't wait to see the Muslim Sharia float in the Gay Pride Parade.
This isn't about the gay/straight issue - this is about where do we get to put limits on accomodation in the public square? There is also an issue of freedom of association, which seems to get trumped a lot by grievance politics.
Discuss among yourselves - but don't let any discussion get stupid and rulez-breaking.
Coming soon to EHarmony — Adam and Steve.
The Pasadena-based dating website, heavily promoted by Christian evangelical leaders when it was founded, has agreed in a civil rights settlement to give up its heterosexuals-only policy and offer same-sex matches.
EHarmony was started by psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who is known for his mild-mannered television and radio advertisements. It must not only implement the new policy by March 31 but also give the first 10,000 same-sex registrants a free six-month subscription.
“That was one of the things I asked for,” said Eric McKinley, 46, who complained to New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights after being turned down for a subscription in 2005.
The company said that Warren was not giving interviews on the settlement. But attorney Theodore Olson, who issued a statement on the company’s behalf, made clear that it did not agree to offer gay matches willingly. “Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business,” Olson said, “we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the attorney general since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable.”
The settlement, which did not find that EHarmony broke any laws, calls for the company to either offer the gay matches on its current venue or create a new site for them. EHarmony has opted to create a site called Compatiblepartners.net.
Warren had said in past interviews that he didn’t want to feature same-sex services on EHarmony — which matches people based on long questionnaires concerning personality traits, relationship history and interests — because he felt he didn’t know enough about gay relationships.
Okay. I understand this is an issue of equal public accomodation in it's thrust. What I fail to understand is why is the solution to force eHarmony to build a business entity it's owners aren't comfortable with? eHarmony settled rather than go through litigation, though they've been sued before by a lesbian and by a guy who was married (admittedly, getting divorced) and wanted to start spouse-shopping again.
So, even though there are gay-oriented match-making services, and there are many other match-making services which don't care that much about your marital status, we have to compel eHarmony to build such a service, because we want to use eHarmony, by golly, and they shouldn't let us not use it.
It's a matter of where can we draw the lines? You can make an analogy that excluding gays from eHarmony is similar to excluding blacks from Harvard, and is a denial of equal opportunity.
But where does that sort of logic end? Can I now sue a vegetarian restaurant who's cuisine I really like to serve meat - or open a separate restaurant that offers meat? Can I sue Ford to make a car that I want made, that they have no plan to produce? Can I sue CAIR because they don't offer Christian and Jewish literature? Can I sue the producers of finely embellished Bibles and compel them to produce a Koran? Oh, and get it free, too, btw, if I'm one of the lucky 10,000 visitors in the next 10 minutes?
Mind you - there can be economic incentives to serve the underserved market - and Mr. McKinley probably could have gotten very rich if he'd figured out a way to produce an eHarmony that met that filled that niche. But no, he's now entitled to get that service for free. But I don't really think that he's made the public space any better.
I'm waiting for him to sue gay-oriented websites to provide mirrored services for heterosexuals. And I can't wait to see the Muslim Sharia float in the Gay Pride Parade.
This isn't about the gay/straight issue - this is about where do we get to put limits on accomodation in the public square? There is also an issue of freedom of association, which seems to get trumped a lot by grievance politics.
Discuss among yourselves - but don't let any discussion get stupid and rulez-breaking.
