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eHarmony to Launch Gay Dating Site ‘Compatible Partners’
Widely advertised dating site eHarmony.com will launch a new dating site for the gay community at the end of March called ‘Compatible Partners’.
Says the Boston Globe, “it might be the first dating site whose owners didn’t really want to create it.”
eHarmony claims to have a “scientific method” for matching singles, and initially only offered their matchmaking services to heterosexual couples. The formula used to match customers is based on research of straight, married couples, which is why the site says that membership is limited to heterosexuals.
This practice was challenged in 2005 when discrimination lawsuit was filed asking eHarmony to allow gay members.
eHarmony fought the lawsuit, but after the case was found to have probable cause, the company settled a compromise which resulted in ‘Compatible Partners’, which eHarmony promised to roll out by March 31. “It’s something we’re going to be fully supporting as a line of business,” says Paul Breton, a spokesman for eHarmony.
Members of the LGBT community that are aware of eHarmony’s prior history are not expected to welcome the new gay dating site with open arms.
There are many options for gay and lesbian dating online that are welcoming to the community they service. Many are even gay or lesbian owned, and there are also mainstream sites that are gay and lesbian-friendly. eHarmony initially took a stance that made the site appear to be not so friendly to same sex couples, and even after probable cause towards discrimination was found, eHarmony’s choice to create a separate but equal dating site in the form of Compatible Partners (rather than opening the doors of eHarmony to everybody) still gives of the appearance of anti gay to many gay and lesbian single who are looking for love and know the site’s history.
For those gay singles who may be unaware of the ties Compatible Partners has to eHarmony’s discrimination suit, it will be interesting to see if the matchmakers use the same formula for happiness, and how successful their site is at matching compatible partners together.
Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more about her online by visiting her website at www.juliephineas.com.
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10 Responses to eHarmony to Launch Gay Dating Site ‘Compatible Partners’
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Kizzle
March 28, 2009 at 10:46 am
Is this new compatible partners going to be available to Canadians as well? Or just Americans? I see another lawsuit coming if that’s the case!
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~Julie Phineas~
March 12, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I think that probable cause towards discrimination was found because eHarmony does not advertise as a niche site. They advertise to help find you a compatible long term partner. Its misleading to the gay consumer. Other sites that advertise to find you a catholic partner, or something specific like that are transparent and less likely to mislead. In either case, you shouldn’t be able to deny access to anyone, unless they are underage or engage in misconduct. If a straight person wants to join a gay site, they aren’t going to have much fun there. I think if they were kept out from there it would be probably cause for discrimination as well. Let me be clear this is different from inclusiveness. A site does not have to be inclusive. They are okay to create sites that are for specific markets. Discrimination is a whole new ballpark. Discrimination is never OK, at least not in America.
One good example is that here on this site we get visitors from all walks of life, not just lesbians. Our content is geared towards lesbians, but we remain inclusive of all in that we don’t delete comments from non-lesbians, we don’t delete memberships of men in our social network; and the only grounds we have to remove a person from our site (regardless of orientation, gender, etc) is if there is misconduct. We try to be inclusive AND we don’t discriminate.
It seems like eHarmony’s problem stemmed from their system, which is based on studies done of heterosexual couples. However this really is no excuse in my book when sites like Yahoo! Personals were geared towards heterosexuals in the beginning, yet still opened their services to the gay and lesbian community after time.
Tara
March 12, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Now, would it also be discrimination that all the gay/lesbian dating sites on the link provided do not offer options for trans or bi? Before we point fingers about discrimination we might want to check that we ourselves are not guilty of it.
Brien
March 12, 2009 at 10:53 am
My question is – why did we (as a community) challenge it in the first place? They have every right to not have a website for us gay people – and we have every right not to pay them for services they don’t have a want to provide. Is it discrimination? Sure! But I dont think its unacceptable for a website owner to not cater to a community it doesn’t agree with. To use a parallel – I dont think churches should be forced to wed gay couples if its against their beliefs. Its a privately funded place. And WHY would you want to get married in a church that doesn’t want you in the first place…?
I have a feeling i’m going to get a lot of flack for this comment…
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queerunity
March 12, 2009 at 8:13 am
people who know about this wont pay them shit