The return of “separate but equal”
It’s called “CompatiblePartners,” and basically, it’s the gay eHarmony — offered by eHarmony as part of a settlement of a civil suit against the service filed by Eric McKinley.
How it happened, apparently:
McKinley, who works at a nonprofit in New Jersey he declined to identify, said that he had originally heard of eHarmony through its radio ads. “You hear these wonderful people saying, ‘I met my soul mate on eHarmony.’ I thought, I could do that too,” he said.
But he couldn’t. When he tried to enter the site, the pull-down menus had categories only for a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man. “I felt the whole range of emotions,” McKinley said. “Anger, that I was a second-class citizen.”
But instead of just surfing over to a dating site that admits gay lonely hearts, he contacted the New Jersey civil rights division to file a complaint.
The operators of eHarmony, in addition to setting up the new service, will pay $50,000 to the state for administrative costs and $5,000 to the still-single McKinley.
“This case,” suggests Michelle Malkin, “is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a ribeye or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services.” I’m not so sure. Just the same, I think it might be interesting to go hang around the Hummer dealership and wait for them to cough up a hybrid or three.
Adam »
20 November 2008 · 9:19 am
I realize the title of this post may have been tongue in cheek, but I think that “separate but equal” is not a relevant parallel. Jim Crow did not just involve private businesses refusing service for African Americans, it also involved actual laws requiring that such a separation take place. If complete segregation had occurred in untouched markets, there would have been no need for the legislators to come in and institutionalize it.
Offering a service that caters to heterosexual dating but not homosexual dating is not a case of “separate but equal”; because it is still legal to set up a competing service which offers both simultaneously.
McGehee »
20 November 2008 · 11:06 am
Adam is correct, but I fear we are about to venture once again into territory where the choices of ordinary Americans who are not college students merely going about their daily lives, become the province of cultural regulation by one or another branch of government. It seems we’d only recently emerged from that territory.
Then again, I grew up in California, so this may actually be new territory for most Americans.
CGHill »
4 December 2008 · 8:54 pm
Erica said it well:
So, dude that was angry at being made to feel like a “second-class citizen”? Now you’re getting a second-class product. Are you happy?