Harmony Lost
Question: What happens when you govern your life according to a set of deep religious based core beliefs and use them to create a business founded on those core principles?
Answer: You get sued. You spend millions of dollars defending yourself. You lose anyway.
Such is the case of Dr. Neil Warren. You’ve probably seen Neil on television commercials but didn’t know much about him. He is an author of three books having written “Finding the Love of Your Life”, “Make Anger Your Ally” and “Learning to Live With the Love of Your Life”. He holds a Masters of Divinity degree from Princeton University and a PhD from the University of Chicago in clinical psychology. He also is the founder of the web based matchmaking service known as eHarmony.com.
I’ve never been to the web site of eHarmony as doing so might cause a slight rift in my own relationship. But I am familiar with their service thanks to all the TV commercials. There’s a smiling Neil touting the successful matches created by his company and all the happy couples who met and married and appear to be having the time of their life together. If you’re like me you watch them and think “Yea, talk to me in a couple of years Bob and Suzie, after she tells you she doesn’t want your friends coming over and you have to get rid of your dog because it upsets her cat. And oh, by the way, her mom is coming for another month long visit.” But maybe that’s just me.
Dr. Warren created the computerized matchmaking techniques of his company based on his knowledge of clinical psychology and his core family values beliefs based on his Masters of Divinity. Neil is a guy who used to discuss these beliefs on the daily radio broadcast of “Focus on the Family”. But apparently having a core set of beliefs and using them to found a successful business is illegal in this country, or at least in the neighboring, often hostile nation of New Jersey.
Enter Eric McKinley. Eric is gay. I don’t mean gay as in happy because he is obviously not. No, I mean gay as in tapping your foot under the stall of a men’s public toilet gay. I’m still not sure how gay guys learn all those secret signs like tapping your foot in the restroom if you want to hook up, but I can tell you I sure don’t go in there and sit down wearing my i pod headphones anymore. Anyway, Eric is just gay and not happy because eHarmony didn’t have a section for matchmaking men with hopefully similarly minded men. Never mind the fact that there are probably several thousand web sites that cater to the gay “lifestyle”. Nope, old Eric wanted to use this particular site and service so much that he filed a discrimination law suit with the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights. After years of fighting this absurd demand in court Dr. Warren relented and has agreed to settle the suit by including a gay and lesbian matchmaking section on eHarmony. In the agreement which I am certain was drawn up by freedom fighting lawyers, eHarmony further pacified the shattered feelings of Mr. McKinley by offering free use of this service to 10,000 gays and gave Eric $5,000 and the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights $50,000. To add insult to injury eHarmony must now include pictures of the happy gays in their advertising, retain a media consultant experienced in promoting the gay “lifestyle”, change anything in their corporate handbooks or on their web site that could be seen as discriminatory and commit to advertising their services to gays and lesbians.
This of course will once again be challenged in court if eHarmony has commercials showing clips of heterosexual couples kissing and not gay and lesbian couples swapping spit as well. Just what the kids need for that commercial break during the “family time” shows. Maybe they can run them between the commercials advertising the pills for an ailing johnson and Vagisil anti-itch medication.
I feel bad for Neil Warren that he finally got to the point where he felt he needed to roll over and take it, abandoning the core beliefs that led him to create this service in the first place. I feel bad that our legal system not only allowed it happen but promotes political correctness at the expense of personal freedom. I feel bad that the lawyers Dr. Warren hired were not savvy enough or legally adept enough to prevail. And I feel bad for all of us that this kind of skewed liberal mentality has once again pushed us a little closer to the complete destruction of the values that are the moral guidance of this country.
To those who would think I am overreacting allow me to ask a few questions. What makes Eric McKinley’s right to his pursuit of happiness more important or compelling then Dr. Warren’s right to his pursuit of happiness? If I offer a product or service to the public does it have to include every single member of the public regardless of whether they can use it or not? This suit was brought as a civil rights issue but can’t the term “civil rights” now be used to include just about anything we do or want? Will a car dealer have to start selling horses to insure the civil rights of the Amish are not infringed upon?
At what point do we as a nation simply say enough? How far will we allow this to go? When will the silent majority become angry enough to get off our ass and do something? I happen to believe in the Constitution and all that it stands for. I believe that all men are created equal and have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am in no way suggesting that Eric McKinley does not have all these rights, but I insist that he is not entitled to any of them at the expense of mine. Mr. McKinley is guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us must, by law, assist him in his pursuit. eHarmony did nothing to impede or infringe on Eric McKinley’s rights to do whatever he wants with whomever he wants. But I do not believe they should be required by law to facilitate the process for him.
Using this suit as an example, what is preventing me from going to one of the Multiplex theaters near my house, buying a ticket for a PG or R rated movie and then suing the theater for not showing a XXX porn film instead? I know that the movie theater never advertised that they would show porn. I know that they do not want to show porn because that is not their target audience. I know that they are in the business of showing big budget Hollywood films, even though these can quite often be mistaken for porn. I know that there are a number of theaters in the city that show nothing but porn. But I have a right to my pursuit of XXX porn happiness and the Multiplex has discriminated against me by not allowing me to see it. There is nothing illegal about what I want. I am over 21 and I lugged my own trench coat all the way from the car. I just happen to enjoy a good XXX porn movie and the stimulating dialog therein. But the Multiplex and their corporate policy of no hard core XXX porn has made me feel less then equal about my porn fetish lifestyle and now they need to pay. How is this scenario any different?
Let me also ask, if the web site eHarmony is a matchmaking service founded and dedicated to the principle of allowing people with defined interest matches to meet with the ultimate goal being that it lead to marriage, how can they provide this service to gays? Gay marriage is illegal in the United States except in Massachusetts and Connecticut. With the recent passage of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California, wouldn’t that seem to send the message that Americans do not want to allow gays marriage? Wouldn’t this make the site now in direct conflict with the will and the law of the people in 48 states?
Obviously eHarmony will have to remove its stated goal of marriage. It will have to change its reason for being. It will have to abandon the reason it was thought to be of value in the first place. It will become a place to hook up, shack up and break up. They may as well replace the refined computer search with a lottery.
As I said, I feel bad for Neil Warren. I understand why he did what he did, but I really wish he had decided to fight for his principles even if it meant folding up the eHarmony tent. In the end it all came down to expenses. Not in the settlement costs which are really almost nothing. No, it came down to keeping a business at the expense of its purpose. eHarmony had previously been successful staving off an attempt at legal blackmail from a married man who threatened to sue them because they did not have a section for married people who are looking to commit adultery. At this point they may as well just roll over and add that one as well.
America has not gone to hell yet, but the liberal legal system and New Jersey Division of Civil Rights are certainly weaving the hand basket.
