eHarmony doesn’t exclude homosexuals – they simply don’t provide the service of matching a male with a male, which is what the lawsuit was about. They also don’t match married men with single women, which they were sued for, nor women with women, men with transvestites, nor men with multiple partners. This is not their niche, expertise nor provided service. The lawsuit didn’t content that eHarmony let the guy join – the requested that he be matched with another man – that is service, not entrance.

This precedent is dangerous – because it opens niche businesses to provide services against their niche and expertise – which is what specifically sets that business apart – without exclusivity, Curves is just another gym, eHarmony – jdate.com or gay.com are just another dating website. You can’t get a taco at pizza hut, you can’t request a male to male match at eHarmony.

For the record eHarmoney does allow non-faith members on their site. And what if eHarmony’s male-to-male business fails? Is that now discrimination?

Hemant, starting the new “gay” site doesn’t solve the problem about discriminating against atheists. Any developments on that front?

The linked newspaper article says e-Harmony does include atheist members; that rather surprised me.

A few years ago I remember a non-religious guy who was rejected by eHarmony saying he was essentially undatable. He took the personality profile and the result was “we can’t help you.” Apparently 28 or so of the “dimensions of compatibility” involved religion and the algorithm fails when you divide by zero.

1. They’re supposedly scientific in how they match people. Based on data from straight couples/relationships. We don’t really know what that data is, so I’m not sure how we could assume that it could be equally applied to gay relationships.

2. They can do whatever the hell they want. They’re a private business, and there certainly are gay-only dating sites.

3. Even if they’re being dicks: lots of people are dicks. Big deal.

My motive is to operate a business in pursuit of profit the way I feel fit to do so.

If you don’t like my services, you are free to go elsewhere, thus exercising your right to control my profits.

If you or the government seeks to regulate my business through the intervention of “public good” then I lose my freedom to operate my business.

The long and short of it is, its a private company, so you need to go elsewhere, or better yet create your own company and stop complaining.

This isn’t about homosexuality, it’s about gender roles. EHarmony brands itself as a relationship-psychology founded dating site, and the methods used are designed to work with heterosexual gender roles.

This, to me, is more akin to forcing a gynecologist to do post-op work on a male-to-female transexual. Sorry, they didn’t study that, they shouldn’t be forced to specialize in it. Same thing with a sex therapist.

Specialized services exist for a reason, and it seems that reason has been left behind in the name of equality in this case.

Hemant, starting the new “gay” site doesn’t solve the problem about discriminating against atheists. Any developments on that front?