Comments on: eHarmony Forced to Create a Gay Dating Service

By: BC

BC — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I was wondering. If i decided to open up a fast food restaurant that serves chicken...nuthin but chicken...because that's what i do...and alot of folks like it and i'm making a good living at it...but then a person who doesn't like chicken and really likes beef comes and asks me to start serving beef...would i be forced to offer beef?

I truly don't get WHY they are made to offer an alternative. Why can't the other person just go somewhere else? Should I go into an establishment that sells women's clothes and demand that they start selling men's clothes just because i'm there?

I must be looking at this all together wrong...

By: Dave Kalahar

Dave Kalahar — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Month to month, week to week, and day by day now, this country is becoming all about "entitlement". I'm seeing it in our church now. I'm fighting to keep my teenage daughter from buying into it. I'm sad. The line has been crossed for a while.

By: Peter Smythe

Peter Smythe — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Phil, I am not sure that the allusion to Big Brother holds. For decades, it has been unlawful for businesses and even home-sellers to discriminate on the basis of race. Consequently, eHarmony could not create a white-only dating service and argue that someone else could create an African-American dating service if he wanted to. American Christians (at least most of them) haven't had a problem with the racial prohibitions because it jives with their basic beliefs.

The issue with eHarmony is that it wants to operate as a church, without being a church, in the business marketplace.

By: Ken Stewart

Ken Stewart — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

First of all, this was a settlement, not a legal judgment. That is a BIG difference! To say that it was forced upon them is not exactly the truth.

I'm not saying that Warren should've fought the lawsuit, but they certainly could have.

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That's another conversation completely. It would have cost millions in legal fees to fight, so they chose the alternative. One of these days we should discuss a culture where it costs too much to defend ourselves…

By: Ken Stewart

Ken Stewart — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Certainly hiring Ted Olson (former U.S. Solicitor General) to represent you is not an 'inexpensive' proposition, but he certainly would have done a 'bang up' job given the opportunity to fight the lawsuit.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

eHarmony should have chosen to not offer their services to the people of New Jersey instead of given in to something that obviously goes against the company's beliefs.

By: CVH

CVH — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mike,

Good idea but I'm sure then they'd be sued by someone from New Jersey who would claim discrimination based on where they live, a kind of web-based 'redlining'.

What concerns me is that companies are being forced to settle lawsuits like this, either because the cost of fighting them through to an uncertain outcome is cost-prohibitive, or because they see further potential lawsuits down the road, so why not 'get it out of the way' now and hopefully end up with a more palatable outcome than a future lawsuit may result in.

With the rise of gay rights activism in the culture, I'm sure more businesses and ministries will have to face situations they wouldn't have envisioned in the past. If civil rights include race and religion in our brave new world, doesn't it follow that sexual orientation will follow? And while we want to engage the culture and have positive relationships with people of any sexual orientation, the bottom line is legal decisions are being made based on a morality that is civil, not Biblical.

What I don't understand about the law or civil rights legislation is how it can be interpreted in cases such as this to create, in effect, a double-standard. Are we back to 'separate but equal'? And what if the case involved a smaller company? If they were forced to settle a case in such a manner, could they then sue the state for the cost of creating another product (or website), especially if doing so might bankrupt the company?

The principles of 'rights' and 'entitlement' are worthy when held up to the light of common sense and truth. The problem, increasingly, is that the ones who are making the judgments of what is a 'right', what is common sense and, ultimately, what is truth, hold values that are diametrically opposed to those of people of faith.

By: Mary Hutchinson

Mary Hutchinson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This company had the money to fight it. They were within their rights as a private company, but they caved.

That is the scary part...that people are just giving up without a fight,

By: Jeff Reid

Jeff Reid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Amen to that! What do we have to do? We have to keep the conversation going… that it's just plain wrong! Does God love the adulterer? of course he does. BUT, They weren't born that way, right?! We need compelling ad campaigns that say just that ~ the sexual obsession of the gay lifestyle is in no way different than the sexually obsession and emotional connection of someone who's having an affair. But we don't fight for their rights, too, do we? No one could never sue eHarmony, successfully, for not catering to those who'd like to become mistresses. We simply have to teach our children to resist thoughts that are impure, the same way we, as adults, would resist desires for adultery.