eHarmony Blog.com

Throughout the week there has been buzz on the Internet over one particular Chemistry TV ad. As many as 46 blogs have commented on this video:

Comments included the following:

• “… apparently gay folks don’t have 29 dimensions of compatibility that hets do …” — Pandagon
• “As I see it, we should celebrate love in all its many forms.”
• “Anti-Gay eHarmony Asks Pro-Gay Chemistry.com to Cease Ads
• eHarmony Run By Homophobic Bible Beaters
• Dating website takes on eHarmony.com’s gay ban
• “A business that makes its living selling folks the joys of love and romance while peddling cheapshit bigotry out the side door, probably isn’t all that serious about the love and romance it’s dealing out the front door either.”
• “… a neat little rejection of corporate pandering to sexual bigotry …”
• “… so there you go – gays can’t get married, so they can’t find true love. Makes perfect sense.”

eHarmony’s official stand on the issue

After a search for truth, we’d like to present eHarmony’s official stand on this matter. Here it is, in chronological order, free of fluffy press-release- speak from eH’s public relations department.

eHarmony’s own Help Section

The following text was in eHarmony’s help section at least since November 11, 2003 and at least until February 5, 2005. NOTE: It has been pulled out.

Does eHarmony offer same-sex matching?

eHarmony does not offer same sex matching services. We’re sorry if the placement of recent advertising led you to believe that we offer this service. eHarmony’s matching system is designed to match highly compatible men and women who are seeking a successful long-term relationship. Our ongoing research has examined thousands of married couples to determine what factors predict the greatest degree of success in the marriage relationship.

Based on over 35 years of clinical practice and empirical study, eHarmony has discovered what similarities and differences between men and women lead to their most successful unions. This unprecedented research into compatibility has been conducted with the goal of lowering the rate of unsuccessful marriages and divorce by providing singles with a tool for finding truly compatible matches with whom to pursue a relationship. With this goal in mind, eHarmony’s research has only examined heterosexual relationships.

No ‘eHarmony’ for gays

by Christopher Seely, Southern Voice, Dec. 19, 2003, http://www.sovo.com/print.cfm?content_id=1374

Gay Internet surfers should spare themselves the 30 to 40 minutes it takes to complete a personality profile for eHarmony.com, an online dating service.

The matchmaking site doesn’t allow same-sex couplings because some members could be “turned off” by references to “MSM [men seeking men]” or “WSW” on the site, according to Dr. Steve Carter, director of research and product development.

“We are trying to be sensitive, but you get to the dilemma of trying to make everybody happy,” Carter said. “A lot of the core audience for the service are the Christian religious conservatives who would be turned off.”

Some visitors to the site complain that eHarmony.com doesn’t warn gay hopefuls up front that same-sex matchmaking isn’t included — before they fill out the site’s personality profile designed by psychologists.

The site’s developers considered implementing pop-up messages on the first page to forewarn gay surfers of the site’s policy, but site officials didn’t want to scare away their target audience on the first page, Carter said.

Instead, an explanation of the site’s policy excluding gays was added in the Frequently Asked Questions sub-page, after gay users wrote in.

“We’re sorry if the placement of recent advertising led you to believe that we offer this service,” the explanation states. “eHarmony’s matching system is designed to match highly compatible men and women.”

The “phenomenon” of gay singles who want to find long-lasting relationships through the site is “relatively recent” since the site’s inception in 2000, Carter said.

“We don’t provide matchmaking for homosexual relationships,” Carter said. “What we are doing is trying to help solve a problem, and gay relationships just aren’t our agenda.”

The founding principle for eHarmony.com is to “mitigate and prevent divorce” in heterosexual marriages by using more than 35 years of research into what makes marriage work compiled by Dr. Neil Clark Warren …

Love Machines

By Jennifer Hahn, LA CityBeat, February 23, 2005, http://www.alternet.org/story/21291/

… Marylyn Warren denies that eHarmony’s exclusion of gays and lesbians has anything to do with its founder’s religious principles. “It’s nothing against it, we just don’t want to be involved in something we don’t know anything about,” she says, noting that eHarmony’s research was conducted on married heterosexual couples. “Our goal is to create good heterosexual families, I guess.” …

eHarmony: Heart and soul

by Janet Kornblum, USA Today, May 18, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-05-18-eharmony_x.htm

… But Warren says eHarmony promotes heterosexual marriage, about which he has done extensive research. He says he does not know enough about gay and lesbian relationships to do same-sex matching.

It “calls for some very careful thinking. Very careful research.” He adds that same-sex marriage is illegal in most states. “We don’t really want to participate in something that’s illegal.” …

My date with Mr. eHarmony

by Rebecca Traister, SALON.com, June 10, 2005, http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/06/10/warren/

… When I asked Warren about his refusal to serve same-sex couples, he listed several reasons for his policy. “First, we’re into marriage,” he said, pointing out that gay unions remain illegal in almost every state. He also doesn’t feel there is adequate research on how men can be matched up with other men, or women with women.

Businessmen have approached him and asked for his help in building a company designed specifically for gay couples. Warren was proud to tell me that he advises them to research the kinds of compatibility that make gay relationships last. “It did my heart good that these guys I talked to, these gay guys, have since said, ‘Neil Clark Warren was sympathetic.’ That meant the world to me,” he said. But it’s also pretty clear that eHarmony is not about to reverse its own policy. Warren is simply too torn on the issue.

When I told him that I found it sad that my gay friends don’t have the opportunity to take advantage of the eHarmony compatibility elixir of which he is so proud, he was quiet for some time. “I love the spirit with which you make that point,” he said thoughtfully. “And we do do a lot of talking about how we love the idea of being inclusive.” He paused again, sounding slightly shaken. “It’s just not an easy point! We’ve got thousands of years of history of the human race in which this was never treated as a marriage and there are a lot of people who think it’s just not going to have the same kind of stability over time.

“Where Focus on the Family and a lot of these other places come from is that there are six places in the Bible that say homosexuality is wrong,” he said. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. But then he continued: “On the other hand, in the Old Testament if you work on the Sabbath day and you’re guilty then you should be shot.”

I was surprised to hear him play out his internal debate so openly. Sure, he remained fairly benighted on issues of homosexuality, but I had to acknowledge he’s from a different time and culture. I wish that I’d been able to have a conversation this frank with my late grandfather, who was not exactly open to sexual, religious or racial differences — and whom I loved very much. How could I not appreciate the fact that Warren was at least engaging the topic? Far from dismissing homosexuality as an aberration, or suggesting that gays are going to hell, Warren brought up his best friend’s daughter, a lesbian who has two children with her partner. “She’s a dear person to us, and a very strong spiritual person,” he said. “And when I start seeing things like that, I think we’ve got to start to think about that maybe this can work.” …

Interview: Neil Clark Warren on Finding eHarmony

by WHYY, NPR, August 17, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4803877

… “Let me tell you why we don’t. I look back at my 38-year career and I’ve seen thousands of people in therapy. I’ve never had a same-sex couple in therapy. I don’t know how … I don’t know exactly what the dynamics are there. We’ve done a deep amount of research on about 5,000 married people but never on people who are same-sex, so we don’t know how to do that. We think the principles probably are different, so we’ve never chosen to do it, and that’s the position we take.” … Hear the rest.

They Met Online, but Definitely Didn’t Click

by Paul Farhi, Washington Post, May 13, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/12/AR2007051201350.html

… Waldorf says eHarmony’s matching system is based on psychological research about heterosexual relationships. Because it doesn’t have similar data on gay people, he says, the company isn’t confident that it can offer successful matches to same-sex couples. “I’m not saying anything precludes us from going into the same-sex market in the future,” he says, “but it’s not a service we offer now.” …

Update: Translating the Book of Love

by Booyeon Lee, Los Angeles Business Journal, May 16, 2008, http://www.labusinessjournal.com/article.asp?aID=02270813.1141474.1628380.2138745.8194173.726&aID2=125251

… Eharmony Chief Executive Waldorf said that investment in research and expansion overseas makes business sense, just as its controversial decision not to serve the gay market.

The company has gotten a beating by the press and is the subject of a discrimination suit because the site will not match gay couples. The company’s position is that eHarmony’s matching system is based on traits and personality patterns of heterosexual marriages.

The company is accused of excluding gays based on Warren’s Christian values. But Waldorf said it’s all about the money.

“There’s a real business issue here,” Waldorf said. “You’ve got to decide what market you’re going to put resources against. For example, we’ve decided that the Chinese market will be a big enough opportunity. We have a lot of things to go after and the gay community is not a market we’re going to pursue and that’s it.”

Update 2: Online Dating and the Changing World of Matchmaking

KUOW 94.6FM radio programme, 13 November 2008 10:00AM PST http://kuow.org/program.php?id=16291 http://128.208.34.88/podcast/WeekdayB20081113.mp3

Gian Gonzaga, Senior Scientist, leader of eHarmony Labs: “The gay community is a business decision. Unfortunately, I’m just a scientist and not a business person. You’re welcome to talk to the business group about this.”

Update 3: Dating site eHarmony aims to dominate British market

by Andrew Clark, The Guardian, 24 August 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/24/eharmony-dating-british-ambition

“There was never a policy decision why we couldn’t, it was just never a market we were in,” says Waldorf of the gay ban. He says the origins of the site’s compatibility model lay in Warren’s clinical work as a psychologist, which largely revolved around heterosexual couples. “The origin was, being a smaller site, we specialised in what we knew and that was opposite sex relationships – what Dr Warren had done.”

We welcome comments. The floor is open for discussion.