My My

eHarmony to Provide Gay Dating Service After Lawsuit
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
By Joshua Rhett Miller

Online dating service eHarmony has agreed to create a new Web site — "Compatible Partners" — for gay and lesbian users, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General announced.
Created as part of a settlement with Eric McKinley, a gay man from New Jersey, the Web site will provide services for users seeking same-sex partners by March 31, New Jersey Division on Civil Rights Director J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo said.
eHarmony, which was founded by Dr. Neil Clark Warren in 2000, said the settlement was triggered by a Law Against Discrimination complaint filed by McKinley against the online service on March 14, 2005. As part of the agreement, eHarmony will pay McKinley $5,000 and will provide him a one-year complimentary membership.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read the whole thing here. (Full disclosure: this link takes you Fox News)

Complimentary membership? That's a winner. No, really. Hey, I spent the hours answering eHarmony's questions a few years ago. Nah, I wasn't looking for a wife. And I only had to lie a bit about my libido. Hey, I've aged a little. My libido's not quite the leading indicator it was when I had more testosterone flowing -- not that I was ever all that highly testosteroned, even in my randy youth, but that's a different topic. I took the eHarmony tests to see how they'd evaluate me. To see if they'd get close to how I view myself. To see how they'd describe me. To see how they'd describe a potential mate. I gotta be honest here. Factoring in my lies, they did a darned good job. Wish I could find those results. Wonder to which hard drive I saved that? Anyway, eHarmony had me pegged pretty well for a software program. Better than any thereapist I might have ever spilled to -- if I ever admitted to that talking thing, to emptying out my savings in boohooing on a couch. And eHarmony was better than most Tarot card readers or gypsy ladies I've shared my fortune with. Better too than my Father Confessors. Uh huh. I'm thinking eHarmony should not be forced to offer their service to homos, not by litigation, not by New Jersey governmental interference, nor by bad publicity nor by homo outrage at violations of "rights," but once they do, once eHarmony tweaks its programming and fires up the gay hard drive, a) eHarmony's Board of Directors will change their minds because of the financial windfall they'll see, asking why didn't we do this before? there'$ money! to be made and b) eHarmony'll do a damned good job finding mates for those males looking for males and those females looking for females. What the heck, who thought any of us 'ud live to see any of this?