Eharmony Same Sex

1. Eharmony Same Sex Marriage
2. Does Eharmony Allow Same Sex
3. Eharmony And Same Sex Relationships
4. Eharmony Same Sex Marriage

Jan 08, 2015 To settle a discrimination lawsuit filed by a gay man, the Christian-targeted online dating service eHarmony has been forced to open a matchmaking service for same-sex couples. Maybe straight men. In 2005, the company was sued for discrimination of same-sex couples. To settle a lawsuit, eHarmony in 2009 launched Compatible Partners, a site for gay and lesbian singles. When it did so, Warren. Dec 10, 2020 Eharmony Same Sex. On their homepage eHarmony asserts to have the most advanced match-making system, as well as be the best site for locating love. This technique certainly makes them attract attention from even more informal dating applications like Tinder or Bumble. As a result of a 2008 settlement with the state of New Jersey, which sued the company for discrimination, men and women seeking same-sex matches were redirected from eHarmony to an affiliate Web. Christian Founder of eHarmony Says Gay Marriage Debate 'Damaged Company'. Neil Clark Warren, Christian co-founder and CEO of the popular online dating site eHarmony, recently spoke on how he believes the same-sex marriage debate has 'damaged his company,' and that he hopes America can 'be more harmonious' on the issue.

One of the country's most recognizable matchmakers, co-founder and CEO of eHarmony, recently said he believes the same-sex marriage debate has “damaged his company.”

“I think this issue of same-sex marriage within the next five to 15 years will be no issue anymore,” Neil Clark Warren, 78, said in a recent Yahoo! Finance interview. “We've made too much of it. I'm tired of it. It has really damaged our company.”

According to eHarmony's website, 542 people get married every day in America after meeting through its site. The company says there's an eHarmony wedding every 2.65 minutes, and claims responsibility for 565,000 marriages worldwide. The online matchmaker uses patented algorithms via 29 compatibility dimensions.

Warren, a Christian theologian who worked as a clinical psychologist counseling married couples for 35 years, describes himself as a “passionate follower of Jesus.” He founded eHarmony in 2000 with his son-in-law and the promotional help of Focus on the Family, the evangelical organization James Dobson founded.

Warren primarily marketed eHarmony to a Christian clientele in the early years, showing off its connection with Focus on the Family. Now a secular site, eHarmony has been sued multiple times due to its refusal to match same-sex couples.

The dating site reached a settlement with New Jersey's Civil Rights Division in a 2008 discrimination case, in which it agreed to create a new website that would cater to homosexual couples. Compatible Partners was launched in 2009.

Warren said the company did so “out of counsel that if we didn't do it we were not going to have any business in New Jersey,” explaining, “we literally had to hire guards to protect our lives because the people were so hurt and angry with us, were Christian people, who feel that it's a violation to Scripture.”

Warren concluded the interview by saying, “I have said that eHarmony really ought to put up $10 million and ask other companies to put up money and do a really first-class job of figuring out homosexuality.

“At the very best, it's been a painful way for a lot of people to have to live,” he said. “But at this point, at this age, I want America to start drawing together. I want it to be more harmonious.”

A 2005 USA Today article reported that Warren, at the time, was making attempts to distance eHarmony from its evangelical roots—especially its connection to Focus on the Family.

Though Warren is a longtime friend of Dobson, he stopped appearing on Dobson's radio show and bought back the rights to his three books published by Focus on the Family.

“We're trying to reach the whole world—people of all spiritual orientations, all political philosophies, all racial backgrounds,” Warren told USA Today when discussing the split from Focus. “And if indeed, we have Focus on the Family on the top of our books, it is a killer. Because people do recognize them as occupying a very precise political position in this society and a very precise spiritual position.”

To contact us or to submit an article, click here.

Get Charisma's best content delivered right to your inbox! Never miss a big news story again. Click here to subscribe to the Charisma News newsletter.

Five ways to deepen your relationship with God, increase your faith and save money!

• Deepen Your Relationship with God with a FREE eCourse: Click Here to view all of our free e-Courses. Favorite topics include Fear, Forgiveness, Holy Spirit, Supernatural, and How to Hear God.
• Super Discounts and Close-Out Specials:Click Here to view all our bundles and close-out specials and save up to 86%! Prayer, Holy Spirit, Anointing, the Supernatural and more.
• God Wants to Anoint Women Now: Rise up and enter the anointing of Deborah, Anna, Esther, Ruth and Hannah. You were called to go higher. Click Here to learn more.
• Change Your Atmosphere and Circumstances Through Prayer! John Eckhardt's prayer bundle gives you six powerful books to help you pray and change any situation. Click Here.
• HUGE Bible Sale!:Click Here to save up to 50% off a great selection of Bibles. Plus, get a free gift with each order!

Subscription Special:Subscribe to Charisma for Only $24.97 and get a free gift. With your subscription, you'll receive Born For Significance by best-selling author Bill Johnson. View Offer

Attention Pastors and Leaders: Leadership training and development are crucial for success. Enroll in a FREE 1-hour leadership mini-course by Dr. Mark Rutland. View Details

See an error in this article? Send us a correction© Provided by NBC News

Once viewed as unwelcoming to the LGBTQ community, popular online matchmaker eHarmony has gone through a queer-friendly rebranding of late.

The site, which boasts more than 2 million messages a week, began offering same-sex matches in 2019. This winter, it launched its first queer-inclusive commercial, featuring a lesbian couple.

The ad, “I Scream,” is part of eHarmony’s current “Real Love” campaign and opens on a female couple in their kitchen. In between kisses, one woman tastes her partner’s cooking and makes it clear she’s not a fan. The pair wind up on the couch enjoying a pint of ice cream and going in for another peck.

“Being honest with each other,” a voiceover announces. “Saying yes to great ideas. eHarmony — here for real love.”

Gareth Mandel, chief operating officer at eHarmony, told NBC News it was important that “our ad campaigns, our platform, and everything else we do accurately reflect what real love, real dating and real relationships look like both today and always.”

“We’ve spent substantial time recently bringing our entire team together to formalize a company mission and values statement that reflects who we are today,” he said, “Explicitly reflecting a brand and a workplace that strives to be safe, inclusive and welcoming to each and every member of our community.”

The ad, and the “Real Love” campaign in general, are part of a sitewide revamp to move the company away from its conservative origins — but not everyone is on board with the company’s inclusive turn.

Launched in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren and his son-in-law, Greg Forgatch, eHarmony was different from most dating sites: Rather than allow members to pore through hundreds of profiles, it paired them based on a lengthy compatibility quiz.

And, initially, the site only offered heterosexual matches.

Eharmony Same Sex Marriage

Publicly, Warren — a clinical psychologist, seminary professor and devout Christian — claimed that was because he had no expertise when it came to gay dating. But in 2005, before same-sex marriage was recognized in most states, he told USA Today, 'We don't really want to participate in something that's illegal.'

In an interview with the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family in 2004, Warren said he had to be diplomatic about how he discussed the site’s lack of same-sex options.

“Cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York — they could shut us down so fast. We don't want to make enemies out of them,” Warren said. “But at the same time, I take a real strong stand against same-sex marriage anywhere that I can comment on it.”

In eHarmony’s early years, Warren frequently plugged the site on the radio program of evangelical author James Dobson, who co-founded Focus on the Family. The anti-LGBTQ organization also published several of Warren’s self-help books.

As eHarmony continued to grow, though, Warren distanced himself from the group. In 2005, he ended his appearances on Dobson’s show and bought the publishing rights to his books.

After settling a discrimination lawsuit in New Jersey in 2008, eHarmony agreed to launch Compatible Partners, a separate dating site that enabled users to make same-sex matches. It was an imperfect solution the Los Angeles Times referred to as a “shotgun wedding.” There was no link to Compatible Partners on the main eHarmony site, and those interested in both men and women had to buy two subscriptions, according to Mashable. It took another discrimination suit, this one in California, for the two sites to be reciprocal.

Warren retired from running eHarmony in 2007 but returned as chief executive in 2012. In a 2013 interview with CNBC, he lamented that his company was forced to “put up a same-sex site” and said gay marriage “has really damaged our company.”

“We literally had to hire guards to protect our lives, because the people were so hurt and angry with us,” he said at the time, because “Christian people” felt the company’s gay dating site was “a violation to scripture.”

Warren also suggested to CNBC that eHarmony invest $10 million to “figure out” homosexuality, which he called “at the very best … a painful way for a lot of people to have to live.”

Does Eharmony Allow Same Sex

Warren stepped down as CEO again in 2016 and is no longer involved with the company, according to Mandel. Since 2019, eHarmony has been led by a three-person team — Mandel, Chief Customer Care Officer Carlos Robles and Chief Financial Officer Stefan Schulze.

Eharmony And Same Sex Relationships

CompatiblePartners.com started redirecting to the main eHarmony site in November 2019. Mandel said the response has been largely positive, and LGBTQ usership has grown 109 percent year-over-year.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve taken several actions to become more of the company that we want to be,” he said. “One of our main objectives is to ensure we’re always striving to create a culture that’s diverse, inclusive and welcoming to all of our members and our employees. Our commitment to make sure our platform reflects that is a priority for us as a company.”

eHarmony’s benefits package for 2021 offers coverage for gender-affirming surgery, as well as equal parental leave, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and including adoptive and foster parents.

“While we’re proud of the changes we’ve made to our platform, we recognize that we have work left to do, and are committed to finding ways to be more inclusive to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations across all facets of what we do,” Mandel said.

While many have applauded eHarmony’s “LGBTQ epiphany,” the company’s “Real Love' campaign has put it in the crosshairs of the right-wing Christian group One Million Moms. The group, which is part of the conservative American Family Association, launched a petition Jan. 29 criticizing the “I Scream” commercial as an “attempt to normalize and glorify the LGBTQ lifestyle,” which it calls “unnatural and immoral.”

“This eHarmony ad brainwashes children and adults by desensitizing them and convincing them that homosexuality is natural,” a statement on the One Million Moms website reads, “when in reality it is an unnatural love that is forbidden by Scripture just like love rooted in adultery is forbidden.”

Eharmony Same Sex Marriage

The petition, which calls on eHarmony to pull the spot, received more than 15,300 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

“I am extremely disappointed that eHarmony is refusing to remain neutral in the cultural war by pushing the LGBTQ agenda on families,” it reads in part.

The organization often opposes LGBTQ-inclusive programming and advertising. In October, it protested an Uber Eats commercial featuring Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and nonbinary “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness. In 2019, it targeted Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” for including a scene of two moms dropping their child off at school, and it called on Hallmark Channel to remove an ad for the wedding planning website Zola featuring a same-sex wedding.

The impact of OMM’s campaigns, though, is questionable at best: ”Toy Story 4” earned more than $1 billion worldwide at the box office without removing the offending scene; Uber Eats is still running the Jonathan Van Ness commercial; and after briefly pulling the Zola ad, Hallmark reinstated it and apologized for the “hurt and disappointment it has unintentionally caused.”

Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram