QUEERTY — May 3 — Believe it or not, gay men and women actually find longterm lovers via the web. eHarmony refuses to help them. Founder Dr. Neil Clark Warren claims that since eHarmony's a "marriage" based-site, they can't cater to the homos. Homos, of course, can't legally marry and eHarmony goes by the book: The Bible. Now another dating site's looking to fill that gaping hole.
The full article was originally published at Queerty, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Actually, from a matchmaking perspective, eHarmony has a good point. Gay matchmaking requires a gay perspective and a profiling system more tailored towards gay relationships. Enter Chemistry.com and the more targetted gay-only, MyPartnerPerfect.com. Founder/CEO Patrick Perrine personally offers matchmaking services to complement the sites standard matchmaking.
Actually, from a matchmaking perspective, they’ve got a point.
Who has what point?
Discrimination? If your headline is defining that by the strict meaning of the word, then sure, eHarmony does. But, the implication is that they are behaving *badly, that is, immorally*. How so?
They simply do not serve the gay singles market, neither do they serve those singles they believe they cannot help.
We “discriminate”, too, at ChristianCafe.com. We don’t permit athiests, for example. On our JewishCafe.com site, we don’t permit Gentiles (or Messianic Jews or Jews without a Jewish mother, etc). There is nothing *wrong* with what we do; we are simply serving those markets by meeting their respective needs. And, it works (quite well, actually).
So, again, what is wrong with eHarmony?
We have a free market economy in N. America (and elsewhere). Other sites are attempting to service these other markets. So, what is the big deal?
Why slam eHarmony?
Mark hits the nail on the head.
Dr. Warren’s research is based on 35 years of counseling married couples. Without any knowledge of the same-sex relationship dynamic it would be a disservice attempting to match them.
If there is a Christiancafe service and a Tradition Jewish service. Has anyone thought to put an Messianic Jewish service on eHarmony? There aren’t too many of them, ya know. Just a dime.