Imperfect harmony

Joe Kaufman, 26, is perfectly open to dating opportunities. He lets friends fix him up. He's comfortable going to bars. He's tried several online dating services, including Yahoo! Personals, Match.com and OkCupid. But eHarmony? Unlikely.

"I know a lot of heterosexual couples who have found their partner through that," said Kaufman, a residence hall director at Macalester College who is gay. "For me personally, it has a really bad feeling. I probably would not use it."

Despite the settling of a lawsuit last month requiring eHarmony to provide same-sex matching services, the online service remains enmeshed in a morality debate that has been swirling around it ever since a 46-year-old gay man from New Jersey learned there was no same-sex dating option and filed a discrimination suit in 2005.

Lawyers for eHarmony, among the nation's top three paid online dating services, argued that its success (an average of 236 marriages a day, according to the company) is due to its unique and scientifically based intake process. Members answer hundreds of questions based on 29 "dimensions," from values to intellect to adaptability. Those answers then form a "compatibility profile" used to match men and women with partners sharing similar qualities. That process, the company argued, can't easily be transferred to same-sex couples.

Nor should it have to, say many who opposed the ruling. "No offense, but should a business be forced to change what services they offer?" wrote "Jeremy," adding his comment to others on a recent online news story about the lawsuit. "It would be like forcing Curves to open their doors for men, and vegetarian restaurants [to start] serving hamburgers. No other businesses are required to offer services for all possible clientele."

Others fired back that this wasn't about science or business; it was about founder Neil Clark Warren's background as a minister and his friendship with James Dobson, an evangelical Christian and founder of Focus on the Family. (Warren also holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago and, friendship notwithstanding, he has been distancing himself professionally for years from Dobson.)

Regardless, as part of the judgment eHarmony will introduce Compatible Partners, marketed to gay and lesbian singles, as a separate dating service on the eHarmony website beginning in March, an attorney for the company said. Registration on the Compatible Partners site will be free to the first 10,000 users.

This isn't the first time that eHarmony, launched in 2000 primarily as a Christian-focused site, has received media attention. The site has been fodder for "Saturday Night Live" skits, and creative YouTubers have produced G- to X-rated spoofs of the giddy couples featured in eHarmony ads. Competing online matchmaker Chemistry.com couldn't resist, either, offering up a host of TV ads of seemingly decent people rejected by eHarmony for mysterious reasons.

One ad features a hip, good-looking guy ogling a girlie magazine. He looks up and says, somewhat apologetically, "Nope. Still gay." He's then whomped with a big "Rejected by eHarmony" sign (www.startribune.com/a/?4599).

As a spokesperson for competitor Perfectmatch.com, sociologist Pepper Schwartz has a dog in this fight. But the professor at the University of Washington in Seattle has turned more than 30 years of her own scientific research into Perfectmatch.com's compatibility system, called Duet.

"I've researched gay couples all my life and, while there are some extra questions you'd want to ask them, they're not essential," she said.

While Perfectmatch.com has always offered a same-sex dating option, Schwartz said, "somewhat old-fashioned thinking" got in the way of more than just the gay issue at eHarmony -- the service also won't accept people who have been divorced twice. "We're alive a long time," said Schwartz, "and good people could make a very bad choice a couple of times and then make a very good choice," she said. And then there's her female co-worker who went on the site, "and they would not pair her up with anyone shorter than her. Maybe they'll fix some of this," she said, "and realize that the world has changed."

Still, plenty of people are perplexed or downright angry at Warren, whose site was initially targeted at pro-family Christians. Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, told Warren in a recent letter: "You sold your soul." Christiandatingservice.com no longer recommends eHarmony, directing members instead to "faith-based Christian singles" sites such as Christiancafe.com.

On the other hand, some say Warren hasn't gone far enough. Ben Falter, 29, who works in student housing at the University of Minnesota, is registered on Match.com and OkCupid, the latter "because I'm cheap and they're free." He agrees with Kaufman that eHarmony's addition of Compatible Partners feels off. "I do a lot of work around social justice issues," he said. The separate but equal option, Falter said, "feels like going back in time morally."