• Does Eharmony Allow Same Sex
• Eharmony Same Sex Marriage
• Eharmony And Same Sex Relationships
• Eharmony Same Sex Marriage

Does Eharmony Allow Same Sex

Once viewed as unwelcoming to the LGBTQ community, popular online matchmaker eHarmony has gone through a queer-friendly rebranding of late.

The site, which boasts more than 2 million messages a week, began offering same-sex matches in 2019. This winter, it launched its first queer-inclusive commercial, featuring a lesbian couple.

Nov 20, 2008 The dating site eHarmony is now opening a separate but equal site for gays. The Pasadena-based dating website, heavily promoted by Christian evangelical leaders when it was founded, has agreed in. Aug 26, 2010 Shortly after visiting eHarmony's enormous new billboard in Times Square, eHarmony CEO Greg Waldorf sat down with the Huffington Post in New York to discuss the future of online matchmaking, same-sex dating on eHarmony (which has been a point of controversy for the site), and his take on tech from iPads to Twitter.

The ad, “I Scream,” is part of eHarmony’s current “Real Love” campaign and opens on a female couple in their kitchen. In between kisses, one woman tastes her partner’s cooking and makes it clear she’s not a fan. The pair wind up on the couch enjoying a pint of ice cream and going in for another peck.

In 2005, the company was sued for discrimination of same-sex couples. To settle a lawsuit, eHarmony in 2009 launched Compatible Partners, a site for gay and lesbian singles. When it did so, Warren. In a statement Wednesday, eHarmony denied violating the state's discrimination law, and said it reserves the right to inform those using the new same-sex matching service that its (actually patented) matching system is based on 'years of researching thousands of opposite-sex couples' only.

“Being honest with each other,” a voiceover announces. “Saying yes to great ideas. eHarmony — here for real love.”

Gareth Mandel, chief operating officer at eHarmony, told NBC News it was important that “our ad campaigns, our platform, and everything else we do accurately reflect what real love, real dating and real relationships look like both today and always.”

“We’ve spent substantial time recently bringing our entire team together to formalize a company mission and values statement that reflects who we are today,” he said, “Explicitly reflecting a brand and a workplace that strives to be safe, inclusive and welcoming to each and every member of our community.”

The ad, and the “Real Love” campaign in general, are part of a sitewide revamp to move the company away from its conservative origins — but not everyone is on board with the company’s inclusive turn.

Launched in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren and his son-in-law, Greg Forgatch, eHarmony was different from most dating sites: Rather than allow members to pore through hundreds of profiles, it paired them based on a lengthy compatibility quiz.

And, initially, the site only offered heterosexual matches.

Publicly, Warren — a clinical psychologist, seminary professor and devout Christian — claimed that was because he had no expertise when it came to gay dating. But in 2005, before same-sex marriage was recognized in most states, he told USA Today, 'We don't really want to participate in something that's illegal.'

In an interview with the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family in 2004, Warren said he had to be diplomatic about how he discussed the site’s lack of same-sex options.

“Cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York — they could shut us down so fast. We don't want to make enemies out of them,” Warren said. “But at the same time, I take a real strong stand against same-sex marriage anywhere that I can comment on it.”

In eHarmony’s early years, Warren frequently plugged the site on the radio program of evangelical author James Dobson, who co-founded Focus on the Family. The anti-LGBTQ organization also published several of Warren’s self-help books.

As eHarmony continued to grow, though, Warren distanced himself from the group. In 2005, he ended his appearances on Dobson’s show and bought the publishing rights to his books.

After settling a discrimination lawsuit in New Jersey in 2008, eHarmony agreed to launch Compatible Partners, a separate dating site that enabled users to make same-sex matches. It was an imperfect solution the Los Angeles Times referred to as a “shotgun wedding.” There was no link to Compatible Partners on the main eHarmony site, and those interested in both men and women had to buy two subscriptions, according to Mashable. It took another discrimination suit, this one in California, for the two sites to be reciprocal.

Warren retired from running eHarmony in 2007 but returned as chief executive in 2012. In a 2013 interview with CNBC, he lamented that his company was forced to “put up a same-sex site” and said gay marriage “has really damaged our company.”

“We literally had to hire guards to protect our lives, because the people were so hurt and angry with us,” he said at the time, because “Christian people” felt the company’s gay dating site was “a violation to scripture.”

Warren also suggested to CNBC that eHarmony invest $10 million to “figure out” homosexuality, which he called “at the very best … a painful way for a lot of people to have to live.”

Warren stepped down as CEO again in 2016 and is no longer involved with the company, according to Mandel. Since 2019, eHarmony has been led by a three-person team — Mandel, Chief Customer Care Officer Carlos Robles and Chief Financial Officer Stefan Schulze.

CompatiblePartners.com started redirecting to the main eHarmony site in November 2019. Mandel said the response has been largely positive, and LGBTQ usership has grown 109 percent year-over-year.

Eharmony Same Sex Marriage

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve taken several actions to become more of the company that we want to be,” he said. “One of our main objectives is to ensure we’re always striving to create a culture that’s diverse, inclusive and welcoming to all of our members and our employees. Our commitment to make sure our platform reflects that is a priority for us as a company.”

eHarmony’s benefits package for 2021 offers coverage for gender-affirming surgery, as well as equal parental leave, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and including adoptive and foster parents.

“While we’re proud of the changes we’ve made to our platform, we recognize that we have work left to do, and are committed to finding ways to be more inclusive to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations across all facets of what we do,” Mandel said.

While many have applauded eHarmony’s “LGBTQ epiphany,” the company’s “Real Love' campaign has put it in the crosshairs of the right-wing Christian group One Million Moms. The group, which is part of the conservative American Family Association, launched a petition Jan. 29 criticizing the “I Scream” commercial as an “attempt to normalize and glorify the LGBTQ lifestyle,” which it calls “unnatural and immoral.”

“This eHarmony ad brainwashes children and adults by desensitizing them and convincing them that homosexuality is natural,” a statement on the One Million Moms website reads, “when in reality it is an unnatural love that is forbidden by Scripture just like love rooted in adultery is forbidden.”

The petition, which calls on eHarmony to pull the spot, received more than 15,300 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

Eharmony And Same Sex Relationships

“I am extremely disappointed that eHarmony is refusing to remain neutral in the cultural war by pushing the LGBTQ agenda on families,” it reads in part.

The organization often opposes LGBTQ-inclusive programming and advertising. In October, it protested an Uber Eats commercial featuring Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and nonbinary “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness. In 2019, it targeted Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” for including a scene of two moms dropping their child off at school, and it called on Hallmark Channel to remove an ad for the wedding planning website Zola featuring a same-sex wedding.

The impact of OMM’s campaigns, though, is questionable at best: ”Toy Story 4” earned more than $1 billion worldwide at the box office without removing the offending scene; Uber Eats is still running the Jonathan Van Ness commercial; and after briefly pulling the Zola ad, Hallmark reinstated it and apologized for the “hurt and disappointment it has unintentionally caused.”

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Dr. Neil Clark Warren, the wise old matchmaker of eHarmony, is stepping down as CEO.

The octogenarian psychologist who dispenses advice in eHarmony commercials is no longer chief executive officer, the company said on Tuesday. But Warren, who co-founded eHarmony in Los Angeles in 2000, will continue to serve the company as chairman.

The new CEO is Grant Langston, the vice president of brand marketing who has been with eHarmony since the beginning.

Eharmony Same Sex Marriage

This isn't the first time that Warren has stepped down. He retired in 2007, but came back in 2012 to 'turn around' the company, which was sued in 2005 for discrimination of same-sex couples.

The company settled the suit in 2009 when it launched Compatible Partners, a site for gay and lesbian singles. But then 350,000 members ditched the company.

'We've suffered from the contentiousness of that topic,' the 81-year-old evangelical Christian told CNNMoney earlier this year.' We didn't want to pretend to be experts on gay and lesbian couples. We're not anti-gay at all ... it's a different match.'

In fact, he said that Compatible Partners has led to 'quite of a number of same-sex marriages.'

Warren has pitched eHarmony as a long-term relationship site that has led to 2 million marriages. The site wouldn't release its current number of users, and while it isn't believed to be the largest site in the dating landscape, it is believed to be a leading site for singles looking for long term relationships and marriage, as opposed to casual hook-ups.

Marriage has certainly been the central theme in eHarmony commercials, which play upon Warren's career as a marriage counselor. He is typically depicted as a kindly grandfather figure with words of wisdom for young ladies unlucky in love.

His advice? You guessed it: sign up for eHarmony.

Earlier this year, eHarmony branched out from relationships with its launch of Elevated Careers, a match-up site to help people find the jobs they love.