Online dating site eHarmony will create a service for same-sex matching in a settlement of a 2005 complaint that the company's failure to offer such a service was discriminatory.
...Under terms of the agreement with the New Jersey attorney general's office, eHarmony Inc. will start the service, called Compatible Partners, by March 31.
"With the launch of the Compatible Partners site, our policy is to welcome all single individuals who are genuinely seeking long-term relationships," said Antone Johnson, eHarmony vice president of legal affairs.
The company and its founder, Neil Clark Warren, admit no wrongdoing or liability.
"Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business, we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the attorney general, since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable," eHarmony attorney Theodore B. Olson said.
...Under terms of the agreement with the New Jersey attorney general's office, eHarmony Inc. will start the service, called Compatible Partners, by March 31.
"With the launch of the Compatible Partners site, our policy is to welcome all single individuals who are genuinely seeking long-term relationships," said Antone Johnson, eHarmony vice president of legal affairs.
The company and its founder, Neil Clark Warren, admit no wrongdoing or liability.
"Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business, we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the attorney general, since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable," eHarmony attorney Theodore B. Olson said.
EHarmony was started by Christian psychologist Neil Clark Warren and heavily promoted in Christian advertising. This is how the moral will of a society is eroded despite the passage of laws like Prop 8.
Melinda no doubt about it.
This is exactly how it works. Little by little. Inch by inch.
A private business can’t even operate how it chooses.
Posted by: Kevin W | November 20, 2008 at 09:27 AM
From what I read, it sounded like eHarmony did not lose the court battle, so why are they doing this? What's next, ePolygamy, eBisexual, and eTransgender? Are dating services going to have to accomodate every kind of deviant sexual lifestyle?
Posted by: Jason | November 20, 2008 at 09:44 AM
I agree that a company should not have to offer something they do not agree with from a personal moral perspective. As far as eroding the moral will of society, well maybe your morals are eroding but dont lay that claim for all of us.
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 10:22 AM
I actually agree that this is pretty dumb. The same money that was used to make the legal complaint could have been used as start up capital for a service for which there is obviously a market.
Posted by: AaronSTL | November 20, 2008 at 10:34 AM
Oddly, here's a gay dating service: http://www.pridedating.com/ (If looking at ss couples embracing offends you, don't go to the link).
What's up with that if eHarmony is wrong?
Posted by: Francis Beckwith | November 20, 2008 at 02:40 PM
"well maybe your morals are eroding but dont lay that claim for all of us."
Maybe we are interpreting the word "eroding" differently. When Melinda said that the "moral will of a society is eroded" I think she meant that morality has shifted from the standard given by the moral lawgiver.
It seems to me that "eroding," to you, means that it is becoming less and less relevant. As you have the inclination to believe that morals evolve, your morality will never - by its very definition - erode because "society says" morality can never become "irrelevant."
You see how we have come to our different conclusions?
This is really the crux of the argument. A person who holds that the grounding of Good and Evil must be attributed to a higher authority has to do some mental gymnastics to show how Good and Evil can change with the society and still be grounded in a higher authority.
Alright, maybe your authority never said that homosexuality is wrong. But that just opens up a whole 'nother discussion.
Posted by: George Winters | November 20, 2008 at 08:14 PM
person who holds that the grounding of Good and Evil must be attributed to a higher authority has to do some mental gymnastics to show how Good and Evil can change with the society and still be grounded in a higher authority.
You have to do lots of mental gymnastics to actually make yourself believe you know how you got your morals.
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 08:19 PM
You are a fascinating individual, TitforTat, I dropped by your blog (oops, I didn't leave any comments so I basically stalked you) and I get what you are saying. What I don't get - pardon my ignorance - is your sense of morality. Now I don't claim to know how to do the "mental gymnastics" required to make my moral system work, but it "appears" to me pretty simple: God create the universe, righteousness/justice/goodness are some of his attributes, I base my moral system on that which has been revealed through natural and special revelation.
Just to make a clarification: I do not think that going back into the scripture and dealing with the difficult moral situations depicted are "mental gymnastics." That's basic studying. Do I take the Bible literally? Well, I don't like to use that word, I take the Bible at face value. That means I consider the context, consult more learned Christians, and apply it to my life. What back-flip-triple-somersault am I neglecting?
Posted by: Augustine | November 20, 2008 at 08:49 PM
That means I consider the context, consult more learned Christians, and apply it to my life. What back-flip-triple-somersault am I neglecting?
Augustine
I grew up in a non religious household. My mother and her family have more morals in their pinkie fingers than the bulk of religious people I have met. I have been to church and in the last 3yrs decided to learn more about the christian faith or should I say Faithsss. The pastor who taught at the church quickly dismissed the bulk of my questions. I then realized he didnt read his bible very much, and to think he was the teacher. I am certain the bulk of people on here are more learned than I when it comes to Biblical material. The truth for me though, is it didnt take long for the cracks to show. If your Faith works for you, and your and the people around you are better for it, then kudos. The challenge I have is when people "think" they actually "know" what started this all off. Come on, how logical is that? How reasonable is that? If you checked my site you would know that I actually do like some scripture. In fact I like one so much I use it to inform my life.
1 Thessalonians 5:21
"But Test everything, hold fast to what is good."
It worked.
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 09:02 PM
I just checked your response to the post previous to this one and I am beginning to understand where you are coming from. I'll try to summarize:
You see the world and the good and evil in it. The world is too designed and some actions are such that you cannot call them neutral. You and I know that the unexplainable things cannot be discovered by us finite beings so you conclude that nobody knows and nobody can claim to know. Yeah? Do I understand you correctly?
Posted by: Augustine | November 20, 2008 at 09:04 PM
Yes Exactly.
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 09:13 PM
Hey, but its fun debating it, dont ya think? ;)
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 09:14 PM
You are right! There are a lot of people in churches across the world who don't know their Bible. But I wouldn't fault Christianity for that.
I find the same problem in my church, but Christians and ChristianITY must be examined with different standards. People are people even when they say they want to follow Christ. These aren't the "spirits" to be "tested." As for the scriptures, I think that what you are missing is the belief of its divine inspiration. In "tests," I think that its uncanny unity, its prophetic accuracy, its addressing of life's important questions, its historical age, and others can, if only in a small way, show that it is not just some fabrication by ancient priests.
Posted by: Augustine | November 20, 2008 at 09:19 PM
Things like that persuade me to believe that when the Bible claims that God is God, it's true. I'm not really resting my confidence on my own intellect or the intellect of fallible people. I'm saying that I think what Jesus said and believed was true. Now it some evidence was brought up that disproved everything that I and other more learned Christians have claimed, well, intellectual honesty would have me abandon Christianity. Even Paul said that if Jesus was not who he said he was and did not do what he said he did, Christians are to be most pitied.
Posted by: Augustine | November 20, 2008 at 09:25 PM
Augustine
Please, the scribes had access to the OT. It would be easy to make it work. When you follow the history and the politics and everything else that goes with it, well in my God given brain I dont come out with a Christian God. Or any other deity that people claim. The truth may be your life is better from your faith in Jesus, the other truth is you cant prove that its based on truth. Thats why its called Faith lol.
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 09:27 PM
What is it that heathen say... "Eat, drink, and be merry!" =P
Posted by: Augustine | November 20, 2008 at 09:27 PM
Burp. Hey didnt Luther love his Beer?
Posted by: TitforTat | November 20, 2008 at 09:38 PM
"Please, the scribes had access to the OT. It would be easy to make it work."
So the Bible has been altered? History and politics morphed the Bible to be what it is today? Alright, that would have merit... if it were really the case.
History has tried to burn Bibles and wipe it off the face of the world. The funny thing is that with all these "altercations" when we go back to see the thousands of manuscripts collected, the purity of the Bible is amazing. Heck, if for a fact, all of the Bibles were destroyed today, there are many individuals who could recite the whole thing front to back! The same goes for most holy books like the Koran and the works of Buddhism.
Conspiracy theorist love to say how the Bible has been transferred like the game "telephone." But the reality is that scribes were not your lazy junior high student and the transmission of the Bible was far from linear. Had someone changed the doctrine, it would have and was caught. Gnostic gospels are an example.
Posted by: Augustine | November 20, 2008 at 09:38 PM
Augustine,
Are you saying you know for sure the bible hasn't been changed from the original? How do you know since there is absolutely zero remains of the original?
Also, your claim that thousands of surviving NT manuscripts shows purity is demonstrably false. There are more differences between them than there are words in the New Testament. Most are spelling errors but many are purposeful manipulations.
There is physical proof in the manuscripts that scribes weren't the copy machines you make them out to be. They were human after all.
Are you familiar with Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus"?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=397006836098752165&ei=8LUmSfanC4_e-wGS4PSjBA&q=bart+ehrman
That's what the bible says...in Ecclesiastes.
Posted by: AaronSTL | November 21, 2008 at 05:22 AM
Off topic:
Ehrman is now agnostic I believe. For reviews of Bart Ehrman's book see these links:
http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/misquoting-jesu.php
http://www.denverseminary.edu/article/misquoting-jesus-the-story-behind-who-changed-the-bible-and-why/
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=4000
Books of interest:
Misquoting Truth by Timothy Paul Jones.
Fabricating Jesus by Craig Evans
Reinventing Jesus by Komoszewski, Sawyer & Wallace
Posted by: William Wilcox | November 21, 2008 at 08:19 AM
Just to show you that I am no super spiritual individual, I'll give you my gut reaction, AaronSTL. Then I will get back to you with a more critical analysis. ;)
First off, I wanted to say a little bit about the word "certainty," "believe," and "faith." It is the position of most here at STR that to believe something, you don't have to be 100% certain. That's just the way we work in the world whether it is about the traffic on our daily commute or in court cases where we judge actions. So people are on a scale of belief from 51% to 100% certain. Here is the thing, "faith" is not just something we inject into a 51% situation and then, like magic, we have 100% certainty (though for a lot of Christians you will meet, that's exactly what it is).
So where do I place on the scale of belief when it comes to the purity of the Bible? I'd like to think that I have read enough to place myself within the 60-70% range.
Once again, I am just placing my "gut" response as of now. The "fundamentalist" in me was about to just gloss over the link you shared, but I thought that that would just be bad tact. So here I go to watch your video (it better not be some hour long lecture...)
Posted by: Augustine | November 21, 2008 at 08:31 AM
... it is 99 minutes...
Posted by: Augustine | November 21, 2008 at 08:32 AM
I am going to listen to it while I clean the house.
Posted by: Augustine | November 21, 2008 at 08:33 AM
He opens nicely,
"I can see why you might want to read a book by Dan Brown, but if God wrote a book, wouldn't you want to see what he had to say?"
He was asking his class of over 300 and most thought the Bible as the inspired word of God, most read the Da Vinci Code, but few read the whole Bible....
Posted by: Augustine | November 21, 2008 at 08:45 AM
People seemed to have skipped over Frank Beckwith's comment.
If eHarmony is wrong to discriminate, what is the homosexual dating services excuse?
Should we ask the Alliance Defense Fund to file a suit on Christians behalf? I don't think its appropriate.
This idea that all "discrimination" is bad seems to me to be very much based in our struggle with slavery in this country and the Civil Rights Movement.
Now it is common for anything an individual wants to be declared a "right".
Lack of moral clarity and the attempt to simplify the message concerning why differential treatment of someone with different color skin is wrong has led to serious erosion of our constitutional liberty.
I think that it is going to get worse. Homosexuality seems to be the main wedge currently driving the movement to destroy the Christian moral concensus of our nation.
Posted by: William Wilcox | November 21, 2008 at 08:57 AM
This awful. But it is not surprising.
Some months ago I learned from Boundless.org that they had an article up on the site called 'Navigating the One-Night Stand'. There were many complaints. I see they took that to heart.
I tried eharmony some time ago but had to quit because of the high cost. Now I can never return. Guess I'm staying single forever. Oh, well.
Posted by: Mo | November 21, 2008 at 09:16 AM
There is a problem in the church when Christians are looking at eHarmony as the only place to find a mate.
Just playing, mate =P
Posted by: Augustine | November 21, 2008 at 04:28 PM
Augustine,
What did you think of the video posted by William Wilcox?
Posted by: Rebekah | November 24, 2008 at 05:17 PM
AA: Melinda,
This truly is sad news, but even more sad, is that e-harmony, for the sake of money, would become an active part in the promolgation of the homosexual lifestyle. I have lost all respect for this company and it's founders for this action.
Posted by: Thom Raasio | February 02, 2009 at 05:08 PM