Yeah, but (for the third time) that’s an argument about why I shouldn’t care about eHarmony’s customer base, not for why that particular argument works for dating services and not for matrimonial services. The logic of that argument is bad, is my point: applying it to a situation in which no one really cares about the outcome doesn’t make the logic any better.
It’s not hogwash. Ever heard of an existence proof? For whatever reason, their algorithm couldn’t find enough matches for you. Be happy that you didn’t waste money on them and that they were honest about that. It’s not that they “don’t like” atheists, maybe there aren’t enough atheists in your area who are with the service. I took their profile test and said that I was an atheist and they accepted me. I didn’t sign up for their service but I could have. Drop the martyr shit, please.
Sorry, Miller, I didn’t mean to blow off your response.
The question is whether or not the management at eHarmony believes that it’s true. Whether or not any of us think it’s true (and I don’t) is, indeed, irrelevant.
I guess I misunderstood the point. Sorry for making you repeat yourself.
No, the question is, does the claim have any factual basis? If it does, then eHarmony doesn’t have to worry about anything. If it doesn’t, then they have to comply with California law. Wether their error was honest, or an attempt to avoid a law they don’t want to follow isn’t particularly important.
eHarmony’s claim is that they have never done the research into matching gay couples that they have with straight couples. Why is that absurd on its face? I’d bet good money it’s true.
That is… again… false. What they’ve said is that they haven’t validated their methods with gay couples. Again, what’s unlikely about that?
Let’s at least stick to the facts.
Nobody doubts that it is. What you appear to be saying is that the people who run eHarmony must be capable of doing so, which frankly is neither self-evident nor supported by any evidence that has been presented so far. I am confident it’s quite possible to be a certified accountant, but that doesn’t mean you should hire me to do your taxes just because I could become an accountant if I tried.
I personally don’t accept it vis a vis gay marriage for the rather simple reason that marriage involves the monopoly of government. If the government doesn’t recognize gay marriage, then gays cannot enjoy the same legal benefits of marriage as straights, and that is pretty much the end of the story. The government must be held to the highest of standards with regards to equality, even higher than, in many cases, private business, because the benefits conferred by government are in many cases unique. If you can’t get a gay date on eHarmony, you can surf over to any one of dozens of other sites. eHarmoney is not denying anyone a fundamental civil right, nor are they placing anyone in a position of inequality from which they have no recourse. But if you can’t get a marriage license from your own government, you can’t get one.
I hold the government to an unequivocal standard of equality. The government has no right and no valid interest in discrimination, and the power and authority of government are simply too great and dangerous to allow for discrimination. In some cases, I think private organizations should be allowed to discriminate. I don’t think business should be allowed to just willy-nilly deny service to blacks or gays or women, but there are some cases where the rules shouldn’t be that strict - religious organizations, private clubs, organizations that specifically provide services that benefit the public (e.g. a women’s only health club) and, indeed, organizations that deal with personal matters such as eHarmony providing they do not specifically deny service to anyone.
And anyway, even irrespective of equality issues, gay marriage is just good government policy.
As long as you’re consistent, and agree that no business in the State of California should be allowed to design its business in such a way that it makes it unappealing to straight clientele in the way eHarmony does - so, for instance, you can’t even have a site that allows self-identified straight people to join but just doesn’t have an option to click to find an opposite sex date - then I sure can’t fault you for that.
What’s unlikely and absurd is the idea that they need to do the research in the first place, because that implies that homosexual relationships function on some sort of wildly different emotional dynamic that is all but unknown in straight relationships. A matching system that works for straight people should work just as well for gay people, because the way gay people are attracted to each other is functionally identical to the way straight people are attracted to each other.
But, really, that’s entirely beside the point, and does nothing to protect them from the suit they’re facing. They don’t know if their matching system will work for gays. So what? If I’m running a bricks-and-mortar business, and someone points out that I haven’t complied with laws mandating equal access for the handicapped, I don’t get out of my obligation to follow the law just because I haven’t gotten around to getting a quote from a contractor for installing a wheelchair ramp.
And I’m saying that, if you can run a successful dating site for straight people, then there is absolutely no reason you can’t run one for gay people, too. And if, for some reason, you can’t find anyone in your entire business who can add a “I want to date men/women” field to their website, then they can go the fuck out and hire someone who knows how to do it. They are located in California, after all. It’s not like there’s any place in this state where you can throw a brick and not hit an out-of-work web designer.
Okay, that answer works for me.
Again, I don’t actually care what sort of person dating sites cater to. If eHarmony doesn’t want fags using their website, fine. Except that the law appears to say that they do, in fact, have to offer their services to everyone. If we want to change the law, we can discuss that, but I’m not convinced that forcing eHarmony to match up dudes with each other is a significant enough imposition on their business to bother re-writing the law, especially if there’s a danger that such re-writings might strip us of other, genuinely important protections. Gay rights protections are hard enough to come by in this country, I’m very, very leery about tampering with the ones we have unless they result in gross miscarriages of justice. eHarmony’s plight here doesn’t even come close to that bar.
According to a friend of mine, they also don’t like people who don’t want kids or looking for others who don’t want kids.
I got the feeling they reject anyone ouside whatever they consider the “norm,” but that’s just based on her experience and one-off comments I’ve heard here and there from others.
Wait a minute, though. California does not recognized same sex marriage, so shouldn’t the appropriate question be: “If the state of California accepts this argument for marriage, why shouldn’t it accept it for a dating service as well?”
The analogy to gay marriage was only raised because that same argument is used to defend anti-marriage laws, and I (and, I believe, most of other posters involved in this debate) recognize it as bullshit weaseling, and reject it out of hand when used to support an anti-marriage agenda, so why should we not also reject it as bullshit weaseling when applied to eHarmony. How the state feels about bullshit weaseling isn’t applicable. The fact that California adopted anti-marriage legislation does not legitimize any particular reasoning behind that legislation. A far more common justification for that law was, roughly paraphrasing, “Fuck those goddamned faggot queers.” That doesn’t mean that the state of California is hereafter obliged to interpret other laws under the assumption that goddamned faggot queers deserve to be fucked.
I can’t read Hebrew, so I have no idea if that’s what the site actually does. But I’ve had a profile on the U.S. Jdate site, and they do no such thing. Anyone can join. The choices for “religious affiliation” on the pull-down profile list include “secular” (which I picked), “willing to convert,” “unafilliated,” and “I’ll tell you later.”
I’ve been contacted via the site multiple times by non-Jewish guys. In fact, the most hilarious e-mail was from a Japanese guy who explained, “when I saw Jdate, I though ‘finally, a site for us Japanese!’” (I totally wrote him back, by the way - he was funny - but he went AWOL. I think he was just goofing around.)
Untrue. I personally have two atheist/agnostic friends who have used it.
OTOH. when I first applied, they did not find a match for me; I am a straight Christian & want kids.
It IS designed for people seeking committed long-term relationships; it’s a bad fit for people wanting casual dating.
It didn’t take too long for the tired old lunch counter argument to surface. As Turek pointed out, your apples and oranges, strike that; peas and watermelons analogy doesn’t hold water. This imaginary lunch counter is legally prohibited from barring entrance to patrons based on their self proclaimed hyphenated status, but are not legally bound to serve Kosher meals. You may be required to construct wheelchair access, but aren’t required to serve baby food. To the best of my knowledge, as proprietor, you’re not even legally required to evict other patrons who verbally insult those they don’t want to be seated next to.
One would hope an establishment would be as accommodating as possible. But in those instances when they’re not, let consumers (not outrageously-priced attorneys or an ‘overworked’ legal system) handle the problem by voting with their feet.
Thank you for that illuminating post, JohnBckWLD. You’ve certainly laid bare the heart of this entire discussion with your penetrating insight.
What if their defense forces them to reveal trade secrets?
Right now they have their super secret matching system for men and women. by the way, research constantly shows that men look for different characteristics than women do in a mate. It is not THAT much of a stretch to assume that eHarmony has taken psychological research on successful male/female marriages and used that data and input to create their algorithm. That algorithm, along the the money eHarmony has spent on consulting fees to PhDs is their intellectual property.
How much do they have to reveal to prove that their system is really only designed for men seeking women, and women seeking men?
If they give up too much, then they lose their competitive advantage.
It is called niche marketing. eHarmony appears to target a specific segment of the marketplace - people who want long term relationships that will result in marriage and children.
To own a niche with something other than a good name, they have to have a bit more to offer. They go with their vaunted matching system.
They now have some sort of a system for married couples to get the juice flowing again in the relationship!
'Cos men and women are the same really.
Bollocks.
I don’t know if you have something against eHarmony (and I know nothing about them myself so I don’t really have a dog in this fight) or if you just don’t think you can ‘scientifically’ match couples. But I don’t see why you it shouldn’t, hell just applying basic statistical techniques should be able to predict workable matches (or at least filter out bad ones).
Take skydiving. A man doing skydiving might suggest different things to a woman (he’s adventurous, risk taking) than it might to a man (she’s a bit mad, scary, even unfemine). I’m coming from the point of view the skydiving’s a bit of a male sport.
Take it from the other side, lets say it’s to do with knitting. Can’t you see that a man knitting might have different (perhaps subconscious) implications to a woman than a woman knitting might have to a man.
Let’s say eH have buckets loads of research on this over the years they’ve been running and they use this to tweak the matches. Isn’t it possible that this research doesn’t apply to same-sex relationships?
Now, for all I know, eH are just picking names out a hat and discriminating against people on a whim. But their argument is certainly possible.
No offense intended to male knitters or female skydivers.
I haven’t noticed any statement of this sort in their commercials. If this is their niche, they don’t seem to be talking about it publicly, they just deny service to anyone not in that niche.
Their home page talks about their marriage product.
Their about page talks about research presented at the American Psychological Society about successful eHarmony marriages.
It seems pretty clear (and I am not a user - I am married).
The fact that they have a marriage product does not mean their singles product is only for people who are trying to get married. Their about page calls themselves the #1 trusted relationship service. It says you can use their methods to find “the love of your life”.
It does mention a specific study about the quality of eHarmony marriages, but nowhere does it mention that it is only for people who want to marry someone of the opposite sex.
Their mission statement is
I’m only arguing with you because of one point. If they are targeting a specific market, the heterosexual marriage minded person, they can’t do that by mentioning marriages in side notes. They also can’t do it by never mentioning sexuality at all. You shouldn’t be finding out they don’t accept gays because you can’t find the type of relationship you want in their dropdown box.
I don’t see them as targeting anyone as much as they are ignoring groups they don’t want to do business with.