eHarmony eDitorial.

Wait. WE STILL GOT SOMETHING TO SAY!

You've seen those tender, lovely eHarmony commericals on TV—the ones on which happy couples explain how eHarmony, an online matchmaking service, helped them find happiness ever after. Well, we just noticed that all the couples were heterosexual couples. So we went to eHarmony.com and found that, alas, eHarmony.com does not offer match-ups for same-sex couples. How strange, we thought. It's the naughts. We're hip, modern people on the move. And it's not like you have to program a computer to accept homosexual relationships—computers aren't people, too. And and why wouldn't a company want the gays' business? The Internet is crawling with gays. CRAWLING. This site alone accounts for .004% of the Web's tasteless faggotry. So, why the no homosex for the eHarmony? Read this interesting tidbit, taken from a February 23, 2005 article on AlterNet.org:

Not everyone finds comfort in the new sites. One 50-year-old man, who asked not to be identified, was drawn to eHarmony because he thought psychological testing "would just be a better way of vetting people." After filling out eHarmony's extensive questionnaire and discovering that the company did not offer same-sex matching, he thought "maybe they just haven't gotten around to it yet." But when he encountered a blog devoted to eHarmony's exclusionary practices, he realized gays just weren't welcome there.

"There's not like a crucifix flash screen that suggests it, [but] somewhere in the background there, I kind of feel like they're encouraging Christian values," he says. "And for them, that means that they don't want to have [gay matching]."

Founded in 1998 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren, eHarmony was the first and most popular of the test-based matchmaking sites and welcomes more than 10,000 new users a day to its pool of 6 million singles. The personality profile is free, but in order to contact other members, subscribers must pay $49.95 for a one-month membership. So far, Warren's brainchild takes credit for 10,000 marriages, which he claims are happier and more stable than marriages not conceived on his site.

It's hard to know how faith might play into Warren's methods, since he is unwilling to subject his never-published test research to independent review. Is it just that Christian singles, bound by the expectations of their faith, are easier to match? These kinds of questions spin their way through the blogosphere. If eHarmony's research was influenced by evangelical Christian values, as some claim, is it really suited for lonely-hearted atheists, Jews, Muslims – or plain old backsliders?

While eHarmony denies a Christian bias in its approach to matchmaking, the company does have an explicit agenda. One of eHarmony's stated goals is to "reduce the divorce rate in America."

"While they don't mention it explicitly, there's obviously an evangelical influence," says Dr. Mark Thompson of weAttract.com, the company that created the relationship test recently launched on Yahoo! Personals. "Their ads are absolute marketing genius. There's a totally white background. There's a man with white hair standing with a white background. Who is he? It's not coming from him. Metaphorically, it's coming from God."

A sometime guest on the conservative Christian program The 700 Club and contributor to Focus On the Family magazine, Warren received a master's of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Chicago. Warren has also written several books on mate selection. And in addition to operating a private practice, he served as professor and dean of the Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Psychology, which "places the cross in the heart of psychology."

Warren openly describes himself as a "passionate Christian" and an eHarmony advertisement on ChristianSinglesToday.com says the matchmaking company was founded on "Christian principles." But his wife, Marylyn Warren, the company's senior vice president, is careful to say that "eHarmony is meant for everybody. We do not discriminate in any way."

This isn't exactly true, as eHarmony is the only site of the top-10 most trafficked not to offer same-sex matching. Marylyn Warren denies that eHarmony's exclusion of gays and lesbians has anything to do with its founder's religious principles. "It's nothing against it, we just don't want to be involved in something we don't know anything about," she says, noting that eHarmony's research was conducted on married heterosexual couples. "Our goal is to create good heterosexual families, I guess."

"We just don't want to be involved in something we don't know about"?!?!?!?!? WHAT???? You're a fucking business, lady. That's your JOB.



Anyway, what bothers us most is that the above and all the Warrens's quotes are lies. Please, Mssrs. Warren, be like, Yeah, we fucking hate the dirty fags and the way they're insidiously ruining the world, so we only cater to straight people. It's not like it's illegal to run a Web site that only sets up straight relationships. Just don't try to downplay the fact that you're a religious couple and you let your religious views run your life and you believe that by promoting heterosexual coupling and discouraging divorce you're really only guaranteeing your places in heaven. Because that's what it's about. You both just want to go to heaven and get right with the discriminatory god you believe in. You don't give a shit about other peoples' happiness. At all. And, you know what, Warrens? If there is an afterlife, which there isn't, you're going to eHell, where you're going to be set on eFire by a bunch of angry eLesbians who never had a chance to find eHarmony in life because you both were too busy giving god an eBlow job. And, you may not "know anything about" this now, but lesbians will cut you. And kick you. And a week later they'll move in with you and join their bank account with yours. And your cats will have to be friends with their cat, otherwise your cat goes. And you better like wheat and adopted Serbian babies and canoeing, because that's what it's going to be for the rest of your lives: wheat, serbian babies and fucking canoeing. ALL THE TIME. Doesn't sound like heaven, does it?*

To sum up, then, not only doesn't eHarmony cater to homosexuals, there's a $49.95-per-month fee to use it. Fuck the fag bias, that's extortion. But, alas, in fundmentalist religious terms, extortion equals a Disney FastPass to heaven, so it's apparently OK. Reader, do us a favor: if you want to make an Internet love connection, stay away from eHarmony.com. We don't think your money should eNtertain their eGregiously eVil eNterprise.

*We adore lesbians. Adore. We're just making a point.