eHarmony Now More Welcoming to Gay and Lesbian Singles?

Published on February 1, 2010

Last month a California court ruled that eHarmony will have to do more to promote its gay and lesbian dating services. I’ve been reading this story around the internet and it seems that many people are suggesting that eHarmony will now accept gay and lesbian singles into their main site. However, after reading some articles I’m pretty sure that this is not the case.

From the article:

The proposed settlement would require eHarmony to display its gay and lesbian dating services more prominently.

The way this is worded, it sounds to me that part of the complaint is that eHarmony is making no effort to make users aware of CompatiblePartners.net, the service it offers for gay and lesbian singles. The ruling in this case seems to say they have to promote this secondary service more, not integrate all users into a single service. I checked out eHarmony’s welcome page to try to find what the article was referring to and this is what I saw (at the bottom of the sign-up screen):

I think the main outcome we’ll see is that in a short time we’ll see another link on the site (in the list above) for gay and lesbian dating which will take people who click on it to their other site. Maybe I’m wrong…it would seem strange to have a lawsuit just to get a small link on the welcoming page. Although, it is worth pointing out that the links are only part of the settlement:

The firm also would establish a $2 million settlement fund, with about $500,000 set aside for gay, lesbian and bisexual Californians who can show they were harmed by eHarmony’s policies.

At this point, I’m not sure what good eHarmony welcoming gays and lesbians would do. They’ve explicitly rejected them for years…I don’t expect that gays or lesbians are exactly clamoring to get in.

One other thought: based on the ruling of this case, would the law that prevents businesses from discriminating on sexual orientation also affect gay/lesbian dating sites in that they would now be required to host services for heterosexuals as well? Almost definitely not as the case was a civil lawsuit but it does bring up the thought. At any rate, even with all the claims flying around about eHarmony now accepting gay and lesbian singles, I personally don’t expect much to change. We’ll see a new link but what does that amount to, really? Maybe I’m wrong – it seems like everyone else is saying there will only be a single service at some point. I guess only time will tell.

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