eHarmony Forced to Create a Dating Service for Gay Singles
Jacob Sullum | November 20, 2008, 3:57pm
In a settlement with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, the online dating service eHarmony, until now limited to heterosexuals, has agreed to start matching men with men and women with women. The deal resolves a complaint by a gay man who claimed that eHarmony's failure to accommodate homosexuals violated New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination. eHarmony's lawyer said it believed the complaint "resulted from an unfair characterization of our business" but settled because "litigation outcomes can be unpredictable." (Isn't that the main reason anyone settles a lawsuit?) The company's new service for gay singles, Compatiblepartners.net, may also resolve similar litigation in California.
I've never bought the argument that gay marriage—i.e., the government's evenhanded recognition of relationships between couples, without regard to sexual orientation—is a way of forcing "the gay agenda" onto people who object to it. But this coerced agreement, compelling a private business to provide a service it did not want to provide, certainly is. As Michelle Malkin notes, "this case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a ribeye or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services."
eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren says the company has declined to serve the gay market because the compatibility research on which it relies to match people was done with heterosexuals and may not be applicable to same-sex couples. But even if he decided to focus on heterosexuals because he disapproves of homosexuality, that should be his right in a free society. Potential customers excluded or offended by that choice then would have a right to go elsewhere, instead of forcibly imposing their preferences. Likewise, competitors would be free to take advantage of eHarmony's perceived shortcomings, as they've been trying to do. Speaking of competitors, wouldn't the principle that justifies forcing eHarmony to match gay singles also require gay dating services to match heterosexuals and Jewish dating services to match Christians?
Katherine Mangu-Ward covered the controversy over eHarmony's "straights only" policy in the November 2007 issue of reason.
[Thanks to John Kluge for the tip.]
CED | November 20, 2008, 6:39pm | #
economist
I think any specific reperations beyond the interested parties are unworkable and perhaps unust.
I do think though we can create programs that provide remedies to the conditions created that currently still harm members of harmed groups.
For example, many people think black people are inferior and many people inherited this idea from a time when black people were indeed kept in an inferior position, through force. A black person has to try to do all the things we do, get a job, pay the bills, get loans, hail taxis, etc., but faces more challenges on this than we might because of beliefs about them that were fostered and encouraged by wrongs perpetuated in the past. In addition, the average black person will be born into a family with less wealth, less educational background, etc., and a lot of this, all which helps one succeed, can be directly traced to their ancestors, not even that many generations ago, being denied many basic rights (again, often through force).
Now, I don't favor something like affirmative action, because now we are committing more wrongs, sending the wrong message to blacks, and maybe making race relations worse in the long run.
But I do favor anti-discrimination laws. It removes the stain of the past created by government injustice of the past and makes the chances of that black guy getting that job, loan, etc., more equal to me and others whose ancestors did his wrong (a phrase btw, I have no evidence my ancestors did any of them wrong, for all I know they fought for the North and volunteered for the Freedman's bureau, but the point still stands).
In doing this the only "liberty" we've trumped is the "liberty" to discriminate against a person. Not bad exchange I'd say.
CED | November 21, 2008, 12:26pm | #
"Every time you're pressed on this "tipping the scales back", you do not have an answer. Who should be punished? How?"
For those who can read English I have.
My 6:39 post:
"Now, I don't favor something like affirmative action, because now we are committing more wrongs, sending the wrong message to blacks, and maybe making race relations worse in the long run.
But I do favor anti-discrimination laws. It removes the stain of the past created by government injustice of the past and makes the chances of that black guy getting that job, loan, etc., more equal to me and others whose ancestors did his wrong (a phrase btw, I have no evidence my ancestors did any of them wrong, for all I know they fought for the North and volunteered for the Freedman's bureau, but the point still stands)."
AND
"I do think though we can create programs that provide remedies to the conditions created that currently still harm members of harmed groups."
You're just always angry that I don't agree with you and ascribe to that to "you just have no answer for ___". I have plenty of answers, you just don't like them...
And I don't think of any of it as "punishment" as much as I think of it as ensuring that past wrongs do not dictate present and future outcomes. You know, opportunity.
It strikes me that its you that doesn't like to address other people's arguments. Like, why do you think the black poverty rate is 3 times that of whites? Individual blacks, at a three times higher rate, just choose to act in ways that bring on poverty? It has nothing to do with social conditions like the average unequal wealth blacks have versus whites, or discrimination, or the increased chance a black kid will be born into families with less educational achievement? And why does the average black have less wealth and less familial history of educational achievement? Is it not related to past policies which oppressed them and favored folks with white skin like you and me?
And given all that what should be done about it? It's on the blacks to remedy it through pulling them up by their bootstraps? It's their job to prove the racists wrong when much of hte racism was fostered by government policy?
You're a tiresome person at times TAO, whose confidence and faith in your argumentative prowess and the truth of his viewpoints exceeds all objective reality, always whining that people you can't convince are engaging in bias and argument dodging. Projection maybe?Physician heal thyself.
I've never heard your higher ed pity story, only the epiphenoma of it, but interacting with you leads me to imagine youre one of those ideologue students whose inability to fairly engage different points of view was rightly viewed as a weakness by your profs and utlimately led you to feel you were wronged by mythical deconstrunctionist leftist profs...
CED | November 21, 2008, 4:13pm | #
"Past wrongs, inflicted on dead people, by dead people.
You have no sense of justice."
Wow, and you criticize me for not even making an argument? Well, no it's YOU that has no sense of justice, how you like them apples!
But if you think you can bring yourself to address my oft-repeated point, it's the CURENT effects of the conditions created by the past wrongs that I want to address.
"Your condescension to an entire group of people is more telling about you than me. The soft bigotry of low expectations."
lol, Bush-speak! Yeah, my not thinking the harmed groups must fight through the conditions inflicted upon them by past wrongs, that's mighty condescending! I could just as easily "argue" that your unwillingness to help those held down by those conditions reflects your self interest or worse racism. Again, it astounds me that you would accuse anyone in this thread of not making any arguments!
I guess you think a woman attacked by a rapist should just buck up and fight them off, I mean if you think they deserve help that must reflect some condenscension or low expectations concerning them. Jesus.
"At whose expense, MNG?" In this instance at the expense of those who wish to discriminate in employment, loan making, etc. I've said that over and over. How can I say it slower in writing?
CED | November 21, 2008, 4:22pm | #
"Which is why we are apparently as segregated a nation as we were in 1968"
But Seward, why hasn't the market ended this as you predict?
"These are simply incentives that apparently do not work."
So on the one hand libertarian opponents of civil rights laws claim they are onerous on employers, yet they also do not work. That's incredible. Whole EEOC compliance wings exist in most companies. They sure take the laws (and the sanctions they can impose) pretty seriously...
I'm not sure I follow your poverty argument. First, are you willing to admit that your first statement:
"A very small percentage of the black population lives in poverty; indeed, it isn't terribly different number from the white population that lives in poverty (a few percentage points if I recall correctly)"
Is flat wrong?
Next, is your argument that the drop in poverty after 40 years of (something? I'm only talking about anti-discrimination laws not the whole Great Society+ btw) was not greater than the drop in poverty from post-Civil war to 1960? Because that strikes me as a terrible argument. Duh the rate of poverty fell from a point where most of the relevant population was rock bottom (where else would it go, up?). And you know the federal government spent some big time money post-Civil War on black uplift, right (you've heard of the Freedman's Bureau and Reconstruction, right?). And of course, correlation doesn't mean causation, etc.
"This is a bit of snark, but if civil and criminal sanctions were really that stark of a deterrance then the War on Drugs would have been over years ago."
Of course there is less drug use than there would be without those deterrents. Again, I hope you're not one of those libertarians who will argue on the one hand that the drug laws are draconian and the other they are no deterrent at all. That's silly.
Seward | November 21, 2008, 10:06pm | #
CED,
Taking your last remark first, I used the phrase "stark deterrance" for a reason. I never suggested that it had no deterrance, I suggested that it wasn't a terribly significant one - as the dramatic drop in prices, increase in quantity, etc. that economists have found illustrates.
Duh the rate of poverty fell from a point where most of the relevant population was rock bottom (where else would it go, up?).
Well, it seems rather odd that all this poverty is alleviated despite government hostility towards blacks and then suddenly once that hostility has ended what one needs is government programs to end poverty. The again, as I stated, it seems rather odd to me that alleviating poverty is expected to occur as a result of anti-discrimination laws, a rather indirect route to such an outcome.
As for Reconstruction, the federal government spent little on the freedmen, and the main avenue of economic recovery for them was expected to be through the markets (which is why the Bureau encouraged the entrance into contracts with former masters). The biggest thing it did was to aid in the education and health of the freedmen, but the resources devoted to this weren't terribly significant, despite what Southern whites said about the matter. Then again, the Bureau only lasted seven years.
But Seward, why hasn't the market ended this as you predict?
Because people like to live in segregated neighrborhoods - segregated based on a number of factors including race, income, political affinities, religion, etc. The market is serving their voluntary desires. Now I'm not defending that outcome except to say people exercising their freedom in that way is far less dangerous than the government making the neighborhood and housing choice for them.
Now, outside the neighborhood, where people are more at arms length, that sort of group cohesion loses its strength and it is one of the reasons why the impersonal forces of the market aid in the break down of prejudice.
Whatever the case though it is clear that government efforts at desegregation of nehighborhoods have been completely ineffectual.
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