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eHarmony Goes Gay

CONCESSIONS

Lawsuit settlement forces alternative site.

Gay people can now have awkward blind dates, too. After facing criticism for limiting its dating services to heterosexuals, eHarmony.com is finally launching Compatible Partners, a gay matchmaking site foisted upon it as a result of a discrimination lawsuit settled last November. The settlement says the company must make a "good-faith commitment" to make the new site successful. The New Jersey district attorney filed suit because the site was restricted to male-female couples since it began in 2000. EHarmony’s founder, Neil Clark Warren, based the service on his experience as a couples' psychologist in Pasadena and the site gained a reputation as Christian-oriented and anti-gay, since most of its early promoters were evangelical co-workers and friends of Warren who spoke against gay rights. Warren, however, still seems ambivalent: "It's what I did for 40 years," he said. "I never had a gay couple."

Read it at Los Angeles Times