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Steyr AUG wrote:

mo' ron wrote:

I don't have any evidence either way, maybe that's why the lawsuit was filed? If they ran afoul of New Jersey's laws, shouldn't they have to be liable for that? Last time I checked, eHarmony was not above the law.

Eharmony is an internet company based in CA and they are responsible for ensuring compliance with wacky interpretation of some other states law?

They are obviously going to say whatever it takes for them to save face. You are awfully trusting of their word.

Whether it should have made it this far in the first place is a different issue. If NJ's laws say you can't baselessly discriminate against gays, and they are doing that, then a lawsuit is the next course of action. It's no different than if an organization appears to be discriminating against any group, they are investigated and charged if necessary.

What they are saying makes sense and there is nothing you have provided that sheds much of a doubt on that. They arent baselessly discriminating against gays, they are simply offering a service that gays are not interested in. The appropriate response is to find another company of the many out there that do offer that service, not force eharmony to do it.

Just use the drinking fountains around the corner there.  Don't like sitting in the back of a bus, start your own bus company !

What an idiotic argument, as though public facilities and online dating services are comparable.

mo' ron wrote:

Steyr AUG wrote:

They are the defendant. The plaintiff has to first prove that they have somehow broken the law.

They could have been breaking the law, by virtue of the fact they don't accept gays. The validity of this claim can't be confirmed, unless you have a look at their algorithm, which also can't be done without a court order, hence the lawsuit.

But that is irrelevant, as many love to point out, this discussion isnt a court room. The topic is should they be forced to provide a service outside the scope of their company. A reasonable look at the situation with the evidence provided says no.

I disagree that it's obvious they were being reasonable in rejecting gays. That's like saying the bus companies back in Alabama were obviously being reasonable by requiring blacks sit in the back of the bus. Rosa Parks should have just called a cab if she didn't want to ride the bus, right?

No you dont need to look at the algorithm and no your comparison isnt valid. They designed and tested their service through exclusive research of heterosexual marriages. They took a business risk to create a service based on that research. Obviously gays are not interested in a service that makes heterosexual matches. Eharmony does not have a monopoly on dating sites and there are many places to choose from that offer the service this dude wants.

Oh and this is the internet completely different than a geographically immobile individual trying to get service from a local monopoly.

Steyr AUG wrote:

Eharmony is an internet company based in CA and they are responsible for ensuring compliance with wacky interpretation of some other states law?

Huh?  If they're doing business in NJ, they're availing themselves of NJ law.

Pariah wrote:

Freakout Jackson wrote:

I'm just pissed they don't have a "guys seeking toasters" section.

That really stopped being funny a few years ago.

wazzat b4 or after pitbulls stopped b-ing werthy of sympathy?

Farmerkev wrote:

Real physical places.

"Public" as in government-controlled, or simply accessible to the 'public?'  Laws prohibiting discrimination have long encompassed 'private' business.

I'm curious as to what he meant by 'public' facilities.  When I hear 'public,' I think government.  Freecat is no dummy and I assume he knows exactly what he's talking about, but obviously discrimination has been prohibited in more than simply 'public' run facilities.

Steyr AUG wrote:

No one ever said this dude couldnt sign up for eharmony, they just dont offer what he wants. Not even in the same universe as mentioned instances of discrimination.

An excellent point that some seem to want to gloss over.

Indeed

Steyr AUG wrote:

No one ever said this dude couldnt sign up for eharmony, they just dont offer what he wants.

They do offer part of something he wants while other sites offer the remainder of what he wants. It just that no one offers all that he wants. eHarmony promises to match you based on however many levels of compatibility which can be pretty important to people and eHarmony has a pretty exclusive lock on the algorithms for that. However they were lacking a compatibility angle he finds important.

ScifiterX wrote:

They do offer part of something he wants while other sites offer the remainder of what he wants. It just that no one offers all that he wants. eHarmony promises to match you based on however many levels of compatibility which can be pretty important to people and eHarmony has a pretty exclusive lock on the algorithms for that. However they were lacking a compatibility angle he finds important.

So? Not every product a company offers meets everyones needs. It means the consumer needs to compromise on features they find most important, not sue the company to provide a different product.

"39 levels of compatibility" or whatever eHarmony claims to provide is a bunch of bullsmurf anyway. It doesn't take a smurfing rocket science to figure out that people who both like to camp outdoors have a chance of being compatible and a guy who likes bluegrass and a girl who likes hip-hop most likely are not.

This whole case is just some gay goofball trying to grind his axe. There are tons of Christian, Muslim, LDS, Gay, Lesbian, Married Already, Australian, Russian, and whatever you want to find dating sites in existence. There's no reason in the world to single out eHarmony except to be a gay smurf.

I think it's obvious as well that eHarmony only caved in because they saw the profit potential in developing yet another gay dating site. What are they calling theirs? eRainbow? eGaiety? e?

I find it telling and troubling that minorities do not understand this sort of thing reduces rather than expands, their freedoms.
In the internet age, Taking a "Rosa Parks" is inappropriate. Make eHarmony a symbol of hetro discrimination now you guarantee the same will happen to any other niche sexuality website should they gain the assets to be vulnerable to civil suit.
Is the goal to harm mundane, hetro sites or to provide greater freedoms for all of us? I would vote for leaving eHarmony alone and do what I have always done: Built my own community on peaceful coexistence.
We need to embrace the idea of a plural society amd stop expecting everyone to accept everything about each other. We really can go our own ways for the most part.
Better than trying to pound nails into stone, which is what assaults on heterosexual amounts to.