eHarmony Goes Gay

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."