Government mandates man-dating |
| 2008-11-24 |
By: Lewis Lehe
Columnist
Published: Monday, November 24, 2008
A man in New Jersey in 2005 filed a suit against eHarmony.com under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination. His grievance: eHarmony discriminates against gays by not arranging matches between men and men or women and women as it does between women and men.
Last Wednesday, eHarmony settled with the New Jersey attorney general’s office. As part of the settlement, the attorney general required eHarmony to open a matchmaking service for same-sex couples. It’s called Compatible Partners.
Compatible Partners will almost certainly be a titanic failure. It is a business created from a government mandate by an uninterested company — a half-hearted effort designed not to turn a profit, but just to look like a full-hearted effort in the eyes of lawyers. Would anyone really try calling their business something as bland as “Compatible Partners?” It’s like if Royal Caribbean were called “Good Boat Rides.”
Further, there is no appeal to gays in a company that exists, as a matter of historical fact, to pander. It’s like when a kid’s mom who’s friends with your mom makes him invite you to his party.
A reliable sign of Compatible Partners’ doom is that Patrick Perrine lauded the settlement. He’s the founder and CEO of myPartner.com, which is like eHarmony but for gay men. A competent businessman like Perrine should never be very amped about a new competitor. But as he explains, “Our compatibility system was designed by gay men for gay men and would not work for heterosexuals, or lesbians for that matter. In the same way I don’t expect eHarmony’s current compatibility system to work for same-sex daters.”
Perrine’s comments matter for two reasons:
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