Contributed by: Editor on Friday, November 28 2008 @ 09:42 am
Last modified on
An article on The Wall Street Journal website reviews the negative side of eHarmony settling the New Jersey anti-discrimination complaint (see Story). The complaint was about same sex matching not being available on eHarmony.
Some eHarmony customers feel
that homosexual activists have succeeded in taking a private business hostage. Why should eHarmony have to serve every type of clientele? Do Jewish dating sites have to serve Christians? Can meat-eaters demand a hamburger at vegetarian restaurants?
These are all good points but are they relevant counter points in this same-sex matching case? It wouldn't really make sense for a Christian to join a Jewish dating site. The site is designed with the Jewish faith in mind and the members who joined it obviously want to find a partner who is Jewish and makes their religion an important part of their lives. If a Christian did join the site, there wouldn't be much there for them, plus there are plenty of Christian dating sites they could join instead. A popular Jewish dating site, JDate, doesn't allow you to select Catholic as your religious background but you can select "Willing to Convert" or "Will tell you later". I don't see this as discriminatory, towards Catholics, as there are plenty of Catholic dating sites to join. If there wasn't then, maybe it would be a different story. An extreme example of this type of thinking, would be going into a Jewish Synagogue and demanding they allow other religions to practice there.
This is a slippery slope. You shouldn't discriminate against race, age, sexual orientation, gender and religion. The question is what is not going far enough and what is going too far? Should we start cracking down on businesses that offer seniors discounts or ladies nights? I don't think so. Should eHarmony have offered same-sex matching? Probably...
Check out the full story at The Wall Street Journal[*1] .