eHarmony Comes Under Fire from Christian Activists for New Ad
Contributed by: kellyseal on Monday, January 29 2024 @ 11:30 am
Last modified on Monday, January 29 2024 @ 11:39 am
eharmony unveiled a new ad for its dating app in time for dating’s busiest season, but the LGBTQ+-led campaign did not go over well with Christian groups.
The ad features a lesbian couple snuggled up on the couch waiting for their laundry to finish. When the buzzer goes off, one partner gets up to retrieve the laundry while the other lies on the bed, waiting and smiling. Then her partner unloads all the clean laundry on her, and she is elated and taking in the warmth of the clothes fresh out of the dryer. The tagline for the ad is: “Get who gets you.”
According to The Pink News[*1] , despite the cute and feel-good premise, right wing Christian activist group One Million Moms has launched a petition to remove the ad from the air, and so far have received over 12,000 signatures. The organization claimed that the ad was airing during “prime time” when children were likely to be watching television and was “crossing a line that eharmony should have never crossed,” according to the petition.
The petition continues: “I urge eHarmony to pull your LGBTQ-inclusive ad immediately. Please stick to promoting your service without making political and social statements.”
Many social media commentors responded to the petition in support of eharmony and LGBTQ+ inclusivity. According to Pink News, one commentor wrote: “Don’t cave to the far-right … please. Let openness prevail and the love be never silenced.”
Eharmony has had a bumpy history with the LGBTQ+ community. It launched as a dating app that would appeal to Christian users who were looking for long-term heterosexual relationships. The app excluded members of the LGBTQ+ community for years before its recent strides to become more inclusive, specifically gearing its advertising to attract members of the LGBTQ+ community.
In fact, eharmony partnered with GLAAD in the past year to address the platform’s shortcomings with inclusivity, according to Yahoo! News.
But the app’s history makes eharmony a target of right-wing organizations like One Million Moms, who would like to see it return to a platform that doesn’t serve the LGBTQ+ community. As Pink News points out, this is not the first LGBTQ+ ad that eharmony has launched to face such backlash. The company released an ad in 2021 with two women kissing, which drew fire from right-wing groups.
eHarmony stood by its ad in a YouTube comment, writing: “We believe that real love is for everyone, and we’re deeply committed to providing a platform that’s safe, inclusive and welcoming to all members, including the LGBTQ+ community.”
For more on this dating service, read our eharmony review.