Putting an end to two and a half years of litigation, the online dating site eHarmony.com has reached an agreement to pay a half a million dollars and make its website more \u201cwelcoming\u201d to seekers of same-sex matches, settling a class-action lawsuit brought by gays and lesbians in California. <\/p>\n
The company had already launched a service for gays and lesbians, called Compatible Partners, in an unrelated settlement with New Jersey\u2019s attorney general last year. <\/p>\n
As a result of the settlement agreement filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court and pending approval by a judge, eHarmony will add a \u201cgay and lesbian dating\u201d category to their main website — which will direct users to Compatible Partners — and allow bisexual users to access both websites for one fee.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The eHarmony site currently provides links for Christian, black, Jewish, Hispanic, senior and local dating.
\nCalifornia residents who have filed written complaints with the company will receive $4,000 each from the settlement funds.<\/p>\n
The website, founded in 2000 by clinical psychologist Neil Clark Warren, an evangelical Christian, did not provide same-sex matching services until last year, contending that the company\u2019s closely-guarded compatibility models were based on studies of married heterosexual couples.
\nIn court filings, attorneys for eHarmony also pointed to websites exclusively providing same-sex matches, such as gay.com or guys4men.com, saying the company \u201cdoes not stand alone among companies that provide their relationship-matching services to a single sexual orientation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither the company nor its attorneys immediately returned a request for comment.
\nAs part of the California agreement, the Compatible Partners site will display the eHarmony logo \u201cin a prominent position,\u201d and will state that the service is \u201cbrought to you by eHarmony.\u201d The site currently states that it is \u201cpowered by eHarmony.\u201d <\/p>\n
— Victoria Kim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Putting an end to two and a half years of litigation, the online dating site eHarmony.com has reached an agreement to pay a half a million dollars and make its website more \u201cwelcoming\u201d to seekers of same-sex matches, settling a class-action lawsuit brought by gays and lesbians in California. The company had already launched a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}