Sued, eHarmony Must Couple Gays
In 2005, eHarmony, a leading on-line matchmaking service, began to fight a discrimination lawsuit filed by a gay man in New Jersey. In 2007, the state’s attorney general found probable cause that eHarmony had violated N.J.’s Law Against Discrimination. Today the company gave in to legal pressure and agreed to pair homosexual couples.
By strong-arming eHarmony into complying with the state’s view of morality, New Jersey eliminated one more small opponent of homosexuality and opened the door to an untold variety of similar nuisance suits in coming years.
Incidentally, this is the exact pattern that social conservatives want to avoid in the gay marriage fight – big government bullying its way into the matter and imposing a solution that’s not what people want.
This is a setback for free markets and image-conscious companies like eHarmony that would prefer to cater to clients of their own choosing.
Melissa Clouthier says:
These kind of suits make my blood boil. Ditto for women who want access to certain sorts of men’s clubs. People should be able to form groups based on any diverse characteristic they want. It’s called FREEDOM. It may not be politically correct. It may be a stupid group. But that’s what freedom is all about–you’re as free to be an idiot as you are to be smart. It’s up to you. Well, it should be.
Contrary to what’s popular opinion in some circles, there is no Constitutional or moral guarantee that any of us are going to be happy with our lives, live them out in an offense-free bubble, and have our way on every little issue that comes up.
What about the rights of eHarmony’s owners? What about the rights of heterosexual eHarmony users, many of whom will find the new look and feel of the site distasteful?
What about the government’s ability to discipline itself not to act when it’s not needed?
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Regardless of your opinion of homosexual relationships, this strikes me as a bit odd for one reason:
From what I understand, eHarmony prides itself of making good matches based on a sophisticated model based on research (perhaps its not as sophisticated as they advertise). Are we to assume that things that make heterosexual relationships work out are the same as the things that make homosexual relationships work? Is it discrimination to suggest that there might be different psychological mechanisms at work in those two types of relationships? For the sake of political correctness, am I supposed to assume that gay men look for the same qualities in men that I look for in women?
So, it seems reasonable to me that eHarmony might want to specialize in heterosexual relationships, if we want to put it that way, because that is what their algorithms were designed for. If a car repair place specializes in domestic cars, are they discriminating against foreign car owners?
Maybe I’m completely off base. Maybe their reasons are strickly ideological, but it seems we get into some practical limitations for how far we can take the political correctness.
If you want to start a gay-friendly website, no one is stopping you. If eHarmony owners want to keep their website hetero-friendly, why can’t they be allowed to do so? I thought that was what freedom was all about?
In reality, eHarmony can eventually make the changes and accept homosexual clients, and still not match any together. I subscribed to eHarmony about 3 years back and didn’t get any matches for over a month. When I asked them why, they told me the reason was how I answered the question about religion. I think I put “no preference” because “none” wasn’t an option. So their matching system automatically disqualified me from matching with Christians and Jews until I changed my answer to Christian.. My point is, lawyers can force eHarmony to take homosexual client’s money..but lawyers cannot force eHarmony to do a good job matching them up.
So what are the bounds of an individual, driven or “encouraged” by religious convictions, in putting together an enterprise? Will we inadvertently suppress an individual’s motivation to “build” or “develop”?
Richard the objection is not that it’s a heterosexual friendly site and that’s bad, but that it’s a homosexual unfriendly site and that’s bad.
In any event I disagree with the ruling. This is not the same thing as a restaraunt denying entry to gays or jews or whatever. This website provides a targeted service for a certain (heterosexual) audience. If it’s their judgement that losing the revenue of gays is in their best interest, it should be up to them. Hell even Dan Savage couldn’t find it within himself to like this ruling.
There are all sorts of dating sites. Some of them are exclusively for gay people, some for people of different religions. All of them exclude others. In order for this ruling to be even faintly fair all those sites should stop their discriminatory activity.
Hopefully it will be overturned soon.
Since it is an out-of-court settlement, it is not vulnerable to being overturned.
hmmm, well then I expect, as Dan Savage has pointed out, that the site will die all on it’s own. It’s still a pity that eHarmony is going to have to spend all that money for a meaningless “victory” even many/most of us who are gay friendly think is stupid.
This sort of thing is precisely why Californians voted for Prop. 8. And why it seems as if the self styled progressives and gay advocates need to go back an re-read their history books.
Forced social change seldom works, unless the population being forced to change has been conquered with sufficient force to totally crush their will to resist. This usually is the result of overwhelming military defeat, and enormous casualties. Sometimes it forces the population to change its views – think post WW II Japan. More often, it fails. Think post Civil War USA, and the resistance to civil rights for blacks which lasted approximately anotehr century.
This isn’t what the homosexuals want to hear, but it seems to me that the only way to get any degree of acceptance is to recognize that it is unlikely that they will succeed in obtaining universal acceptance. Looking for toleration, rather than acceptance would be far more effective. And that means recognizing the right of free association works both ways. It lets the homosexuals meet and greet, and socialize together, without being sued or broken up by conservative Christians. It also allows e-harmony to remain focused on straight conservatives without interference from homosexuals. Neither group has to accept the other, but both have to tolerate the other.
Yes, and it’s also the reason why I find the “I voted for Prop 8 to prevent everything except actual marriage” argument so unconvincing. Hey presto! A couple of the same sex is still legally considered inferior to one of the opposite sex and these cases still arise. Why? Because Prop 8 prevents none of that. Everything that people say they voted to prevent (funny I hardly ever see anyone willing to admit they simply don’t want gays to be able to marry each other, which is what the Prop actually DOES do) can still legally happen. If you want businesses to have the legal right to discriminate against gays and lesbians, you need to fight the applicable laws, that don’t actually affect marriage. Of course the question would arise as to why you would fight to eliminate these laws for only gays while maintaining them for race, religion etc.
I think this story is stupid and a clear over-reach of anti-discrimination laws. It would be like forcing the NAACP to hire a proportional number of whites or AIPAC to also look out for the interests of Catholics. That does not invalidate the usefulness of anti-discrimination laws per se and it certainly has nothing to do with marriage.
Would you then argue that it was wrong to force integration of schools? Do you believe that it should be legal to put signs up on businesses that say “no dogs or Jews allowed”? Is the argument that anti-discrimination laws are bad policy universally or only in the specific case of protecting gays and lesbians?
If you want businesses to have the legal right to discriminate against gays and lesbians, you need to fight the applicable laws, that don’t actually affect marriage
There are huge problems with progressive judges, not the least of which being the overwhelming blowback their rulings create. Judges are supposed to be “old school” by their very nature. The place for progressive decisions is the legislature.
What you’re advocating would have been much more difficult, probably requiring an actual revision and 2/3rds vote, not just an amendment. Once you have SSM it inherits a whole host of rights which would be hard to limit.
Would you then argue that it was wrong to force integration of schools?
I’d differentiate between public and private institutions. So I support an end to government enforced segregation.
… and these cases still arise.
sure, you can sue anyone for anything. the question is; would prop 8 cause the number of these cases to increase or decrease.
Do you believe that it should be legal to put signs up on businesses that say “no dogs or Jews allowed”?
I think our freedoms hinge on the right of the Nazis to march in Skokie. What’s vital is ending government supported segregation. The majority of private businesses will fix themselves or go out of business.
Wow what? Yet they can have all homosexual matching sites? Should we sue homosexualstogether.com? No. Its like sueing an apple juice company for not selling orange juice. Grow up people. If a site specializes in something that their good at I see no reason why they should have to change it. Besides their are plenty of homosexual matching sites they can visit. A site like eHarmony can do as it wishes theirs no law saying they must provide homosexual matching. In fact I would counter sue for wasting eHarmony time and money.