EHarmony Forced By New Jersey to Act as Procurer of Perverse Liaisons

“Civil Rights,” n. fabricated and supposititious rights claims, purportedly entitling liberals to use state power to compel individuals and businesses to comply with liberal moral opinions within their own private spheres.

The moral status of homosexuality, homosexuality’s social and political status, to what degree participation in certain kinds of sexual activities constitutes a natural and legitimate identity and whether homosexual inclinations are a product of psychological pathology are all matters of opinion.

There is every reason to expect that large numbers of Americans, on natural and legitimate grounds, would hold 180 degree opposite opinions in this area.

Social and religious conservatives have long since abandoned claims that the state should enforce traditional Judeo-Christian sexual morality on consenting adults with regard to private acts. Today, “the enforcement of morals” (the title of a famous essay on the question of tolerance of homosexuality by Lord Devlin) is, on the contrary, actively, and frequently successfully, pursued by the left.

If right now, at the present time, in which Gay Marriage is only the law of the land in a couple of ultra-liberal states, this kind of claim can be successfully enforced on a business, just imagine what kind of Civil Rights claims will be enforceable in an environment where Gay Marriage is the rule, not the rare aberration. You’ll have lawsuits demanding that Catholic Churches, Mormon Temples, and Jewish Orthodox synagogues solemnize sexually perverted unions, and, I daresay, some of them will prove successful.

LA Times:

The Pasadena-based dating website, heavily promoted by Christian evangelical leaders when it was founded, has agreed in a civil rights settlement to give up its heterosexuals-only policy and offer same-sex matches.

EHarmony was started by psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who is known for his mild-mannered television and radio advertisements. It must not only implement the new policy by March 31 but also give the first 10,000 same-sex registrants a free six-month subscription.

“That was one of the things I asked for,” said Eric McKinley, 46, who complained to New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights after being turned down for a subscription in 2005.

The company said that Warren was not giving interviews on the settlement. But attorney Theodore Olson, who issued a statement on the company’s behalf, made clear that it did not agree to offer gay matches willingly.

“Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business,” Olson said, “we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the attorney general since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable.”

The settlement, which did not find that EHarmony broke any laws, calls for the company to either offer the gay matches …

… on its current venue or create a new site for them. EHarmony has opted to create a site called Compatiblepartners.net.

Warren had said in past interviews that he didn’t want to feature same-sex services on EHarmony — which matches people based on long questionnaires concerning personality traits, relationship history and interests — because he felt he didn’t know enough about gay relationships.

McKinley, who works at a nonprofit in New Jersey he declined to identify, said that he had originally heard of EHarmony through its radio ads. “You hear these wonderful people saying, ‘I met my soul mate on EHarmony.’ I thought, I could do that too,” he said.

But he couldn’t. When he tried to enter the site, the pull-down menus had categories only for a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man. “I felt the whole range of emotions,” McKinley said. “Anger, that I was a second-class citizen.”

But instead of just surfing over to a dating site that admits gay lonely hearts, he contacted the New Jersey civil rights division to file a complaint.

The settlement also calls for EHarmony to pay $50,000 to the state for administrative costs and $5,000 to McKinley.