Ron Coleman points out a story that “eHarmony has been sued for running its business pursuant to its own moral — or business — compass:
The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays…

Oh, sure, eHarmony says their not equipped to do such a thing. What do they think they exist for? To turn a profit or something?

No, they exist to give any person whatever it is that person demands. I want my compatibility for the computer of my dreams!

The way eHarmony is acting, you’d think that it was like someone could just take their business elsewhere, or if they were feeling particularly adventurous, start up their own service strictly for the gay community.

I feel sick.

Sorry, I don’t have it. — RDC

They have not denied ANYONE service. A gay person can STILL join the site.

Here is an analogy that fits this so well:

eHarmony = Meat only serving restaurant
gay person = vegetarian

Meat only restaurant does not serve vegetarian meals. Therefore the vegetarian would not go there to buy lunch, or if they did….they would be stupid to ask for a vegetarian meal KNOWING FULL WELL the restaurant serves meat eaters. They would find another restaurant that would serve them the food they CHOOSE to eat.

Are all restaurants now going to be required to cater to ALL types of eaters? Do bakeries now have to serve salads to all those overweight people who are dieting? Does McDonalds now need to offer Kobe beef steaks to all those upper class food snobs?

Also, gays can use the even MORE popular site MATCH.COM. That is where I met my husband And there are gays on there too! I even got contacted by lesbians LOL

But I just went to match.com and was able to search for a WOMAN as a WOMAN. YES!!

There, now they have a super popular place to go!

What is the problem now? LOL

This is so flippn ridiculous!

Gays are NOT being denied service.

I dont see what this is SO HARD for some to grasp.

Oh my opinion that if someone wants to be gay and even live together or have some kind of civil union, go for it. So, I am far from being a gay hater. I just hate frivolous, ridiculous law suits and whiny complainers.

I just think this law suit is so flippn ridiculous. I just wish I would have thought of it myself so I could sue the pants off of truemingle.com for not offering me straight men to choose from!

gay.com is one.

As to your other points we are in agreement. The lawsuit against eHarmony only has merit if it represents no deviation from eHarmony’s business model to include gays and lesbians. As you say, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a dating site guaranteeing compatibility for heterosexuals may not work for homosexuals. To my knowledge, though, it is not KNOWN that what determines compatibility does or doesn’t change significantly across sexual orientations. I guess we’ll have to wait and see where the preponderance of evidence ends up on that score.

A couple of random thoughts:

1) First of all, in the spirit of full disclosure, let me say that my wife and I met through eHarmony. Therefore, it would be safe to say that we are eminently satisfied customers. We’ve even appeared on their web site (but not any TV commercials, at least not yet).

2) Speaking for myself, I chose eHarmony because I was impressed with the paradigm that Warren went with: not just a paragraph and picture, but a whole protocol for communication (too lengthy to go into here, but it worked for us).

3) I have a hazy understanding that Warren’s approach is based on a Christianity-centric view of relationships. That said, it worked for us although neither one of us is Christian.

That said, I did not know (but I’m not surprised) that the service does not include G&L matches. This raises all sorts of interesting questions about the role of religion versus sexual orientation in relationships — none of which I’ll go into here.

4) And before I forget, did you know that the service will not be offered to those individuals who have been married 3 or more times? Does this mean Larry King will be going after Dr. Warren next? If so, I happen to know to that Larry King has very deep pockets — and lawyers to spare. Hmmm, on second thought, I guess his alimony is probably off the charts.

5) As for the “hungry Lesbian lawyer” (or whatever it was) that someone mentioned earlier, I am reminded of what Mark Twain had to say about lawyers in general (paraphrasing): “If a town has one lawyer, he is a pauper; if a town has two, they live like kings.” Amen.

6) Lastly, I have no idea how the US legal system will (or should) judge the merits of this case. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. But I am inclined to be sympathetic to Warren’s reasoning.

But of course, I am far from a disinterested observer.

But help me here. Using your logic don’t I have the right to sue -say- Banana Republic in my neighborhood because it only caters to women? That discrimination based on gender. Or the christian bookstore down the road because it doesn’t have any books on athiesm (i’ve checked) or judism. It seems to me that eHarmony is going after a specific market and has chosen not to offer their services to the GL community because it doesn’t understand it. Which i consider reasonable - they are quite different.