“Online dating service eHarmony has agreed to create a new website for gays and lesbians as part of a settlement with a gay man in New Jersey, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General said on Wednesday.” (Reuters, Nov. 19, FoxNews.com)(via Friedersdorf, see also Mataconis, Sullum, Balko). Earlier coverage: Jun. 1 and Jun. 8, 2007; Mar. 26, 2006 (married man wants listing). More: lawyer in parallel California suit against eHarmony says it isn’t moot despite policy change because they still want money.
Note: headline changed 11/21 to reflect commenter’s observation that despite the usage in the news articles, the civil rights proceedings in question had not reached the formal status of a lawsuit.
13 Comments
This is sorta like forcing a vegan restaurant to serve you a steak because, well, its illegal to discriminate against someone just because they are meat eaters and happen to insist on frequenting your restaurant even though you only serve vegan dishes. Rather than tie up the judicial system, the plaintiff would have been better served by using a dating service that specialises in serving the gay community.
WTF!
Further on PSaunders comment, did the same ruling require that gay and lesbian dating services set up hetero services? If not, is this ruling not discriminatory in and of itself?
I agree with psaunders and royb. From a practical standpoint – why would someone who is gay use a service in which that no gay person is on to find a date? There are plenty of sites that cater to the gay crowd (heck – met my partner through one)… this is just plain silly…
Roy,
There was no ruling, it was a settlement.
Analysis from my gay friends: This is beyond absurd. In addition to the points made above, paying for an eharmony subscription puts money in the pockets of homophobes, so it’s not clear why gays would not want to encourage people to boycott eharmony instead, and would you accept relationship advice, even if it was free, from someone who thinks you’re a vile sinner and going to hell? What makes them think they’ll find any quality matches?
My prediction: in 1 year, even if eharmony opens to gays in good faith, less than .5% of its customers will be gay.
If there’s one thing in the whole world that could convince me to oppose gay marriage, it’s garbage like this.
New Jersey, of course, is a state that does not have gay marriage. More broadly, it would be a shame to treat A’s deplorable lawsuit against B as a reason to worsen the treatment of C, D, E, & F, who may never have heard of the lawsuit, or may sympathize with B when they do hear of it. Why not instead move to fix the part of the law that is directly causing the problem, namely the cause of action that A is using to bludgeon B?
One correction: there was no lawsuit in the NJ case, contrary to your headline. the division of civil rights contacted e-harmony about the complaint, and the company agreed to change its policy.
It seems absurd to me that a company that claims expertise in matching heterosexual couples would be expected to offer other services. Will we next see lawsuits over the fact that outcomes at eHarmony between M-F matchings work out more often M-M or F-F? Is there any reason to think that the data points they use to match M-F will work as well for X-X?
And contrary to the comment by jb’s friend, this isn’t evidence that they are homophobic. They simply claim no knowledge of what would make a good match between people where there is no difference in sex. It is even possible that they had tested the system on X-X couples and found that there was no increased likelihood of a successful pairing. If that was the case, wouldn’t offering the service amount to fraud? I imagine that would be the claim made by the lawyers of disappointed gay clients.
[…] scheduled to discuss the eHarmony settlement and litigation between 3 and 3:30 Central on the PrimeTime Chicago show on WMBI […]
I think maybe I should sue my proctologist for not offering brain surgery too. It’s a terrible trend when businesses think they should stick to what they are good at, and avoid areas where they are clueless. Certainly our politicians would never do such a thing.
When you examine the profile for the New Jersey’s Attorney General Director for discrimination issues (Mr. Vespa-Papaleo), a lot gets explained about why Eric McKinley was even allowed to use the system to harrass eHarmony in such a grotesque way:
Mr. Vespa-Papaleo serves as Executive Director of the New Jersey Commission on Civil Rights. He is on the Executive Board of the GLBT Rights and Labor and Employment Law Sections of the New Jersey State Bar Association. In June 2007 he was elected Chairman of the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission, following his work on amending state law to provide legal protections for sexual and gender minorities. Director Vespa-Papaleo is a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association, and the Lesbian and Gay Lawyers Association.
Born in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, Director Vespa-Papaleo became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1988. A resident of Bergen County, New Jersey, Mr. Vespa-Papaleo and his husband were married in California in June 2008.
(more details about him on the Attorney General’s web site)