Many news articles are reporting that eHarmony.com is being sued by a lesbian who is alleging that eHarmony.com discriminates against gays, lesbians and bisexuals. USA Today reports, "Linda Carlson said she tried to use the Internet site in February to meet a woman but could not based on her sexual orientation. When Carlson wrote to eHarmony to complain, the company refused to change its policy, according to the lawsuit filed on her behalf in Los Angeles County Superior Court." The article goes on to say, ""The research that eHarmony has developed, through years of research, to match couples has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages," a company statement said. "Nothing precludes us from providing same-sex matching in the future, it's just not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted."

Which raises the question…why would a lesbian or a homosexual want to use a service that does not specialize in relationships between people of the same gender? Why not find a homosexual or lesbian dating service and search for a partner there?

This would be like a single person who wants to join the eHarmony Marriage program they have even though they do not allow singles to participate. It would be easy to say that this is a very "hurtful" thing to all singles and "discriminates" against those who aren't yet married. This is just ridiculous reasoning.

eHarmony.com specializes in heterosexual relationships and not homosexual ones. This is very clear, however, this lawsuit isn't really about what eHarmony offers, it's about a lesbian bullying an organization that is founded by a well known Christian psychologist who has specialized in marriage counseling for men and women for over thirty years.

What is important about this lawsuit is that based on California discrimination laws, Linda Carlson may have a case. In a May 22nd article titled Gay couple barred from adoption site settle lawsuit we see that a homosexual couple sued an adoption agency because they did not post their profiles on their adoption website. The reason Adoption.com didn't post the profiles of these homosexual partners is because it was their policy to post only married couples or opposite sex profiles on their website.

However, the judge ruled that even though the adoption company was out of the state of California, the homosexual partners are covered under California discrimination laws. Therefore, the adoption service ended up settling the lawsuit and their lawyers from the Alliance Defense Fund said that ParentProfiles.com (an affiliate with adoption.com) will no longer accept profiles from California and will phase out all profiles from California within six months.

This is just one example of how California laws, in particular California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating against their customers on a variety of grounds. For at least 20 years, state courts have interpreted the law to require equal treatment of lesbians and gays.

So will eHarmony.com be able to prevail in this newest lawsuit filed by a lesbian who is upset that eHarmony doesn't specialize in same gender relationships…time will tell.

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Stacy Harp is the President of Active Christian Media
and the Editor of Persecution Blog www.activechristianmedia.com
www.beingsafeonline.com www.persecutionblog.com