Internet dating service run by rightwing Christian

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Unfortunately, this article is far too long to post to the list. Also,
unfortunately, you will have to wade through a fucking ad to read the whole
thing on salon.com. So I posted the first page and a link to the whole
thing as a compromise. eHarmony has been polluting the TV and radio
air-waves with its unctuous commercials about how Jim and Mary or Ted and
Alice found true love through the eHarmony website. That was reason enough
to hate these people, but now we have another reason. The CEO is a
rightwing scumbag.)

My date with Mr. eHarmony
Neil Clark Warren is the Christian evangelical who runs Internet dating
titan eHarmony. I'm a pagan feminist who's leery of the religious right.
Would sparks fly?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Rebecca Traister

June 10, 2005  |  "We were scared," eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren
explained to me over the phone. The 70-year-old psychologist and Internet
dating entrepreneur was trying to tell me why it had taken him a month to
return my calls. "We thought you would categorize us in some religious way
which we think is unfair."

I was a little surprised by Warren's candor and by his savvy. While I
hadn't decided what I thought about eHarmony or its founder, I had heard a
few disturbing things about them. I went into my research with as open a
mind as possible for a confirmed secularist writing about a dating site
that attracts a lot of Christians, and won't match gays or depressed people
or anyone who's been married more than twice. Which is to say, I was
curious but ready to disapprove. And my suspicions about the company
increased the longer it took eHarmony to get back to me.
click here

I seemed to be the exception, since Warren has granted recent interviews to
publications such as the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He's the public
face of an Internet matchmaking company that has, in five years, become one
of the industry's top five and that boasts the most marriages-per-coupling
of any other site. All of its broadcast ads feature Warren, its
waggly-browed founder, who promises to help you find the love of your life.
In the ads, Warren comes off as either unctuous or avuncular, depending on
your perspective, which might conceivably be skewed if you happen to be
homosexual, in which case Warren will not help you find the love of your
life. Unlike other dating sites that allow customers to browse for
potential partners who appeal to them, eHarmony visitors fill out
personality questionnaires and are matched with other users according to
Warren's "29 dimensions" of compatibility.

Since it's not a secret that Warren is an evangelical Christian with strong
ties to the conservative Christian community -- including a prior business
relationship with Focus on the Family leader James Dobson -- I suspected
that his views on social issues came straight from the Christian right, and
the longer the company dodged my calls the more skeptical I got.

Eharmony, it turned out, had been equally skeptical of me. "Salon, I think,
is known for being harsh," Warren said. "I wouldn't want you to make me
sound bad because, for instance, I believe in God or I pray."

It's an issue Warren is sensitive about, especially right now, as he makes
a break from Dobson's ministry. In late May, after Warren began to publicly
distance himself from Focus on the Family, Dobson announced a formal
separation of sorts on his radio program. It's a significant split; the
conservative, evangelical community nourished Warren's nascent business,
and now he appears to be leaving it behind for the secular world. Part of
his reluctance to talk to a reporter whom he guessed would press him on
religious and social issues may well have had to do with the delicacy of
his situation. Is he a moral man who has begun to question the narrowness
of the Christian right, especially their position on gays? Or is he a savvy
opportunist looking for a bigger market share? And if it means that he is
opening himself up to a more nuanced and accepting worldview, does it
really matter?

Finally, after increasingly aggressive phone calls to the site's outside
publicity firm, here we were, talking at last. It was hard to believe that
we would have many of Warren's 29 dimensions of compatibility to work with.
I am a pagan, single, 30-year-old feminist with strong suspicions about the
ever-creeping tentacles of the religious right. Warren is a married
psychologist grandpa with a divinity degree, a Californian by way of rural
Iowa; he has three daughters, nine grandchildren and strong suspicions
about the liberal press.

But we wound up talking for two hours straight. During the conversation,
Warren grappled -- honestly, it seemed -- with his feelings about
homosexuality, his pride in his multiracial workforce, his commitment to
marriage, and his belief that I should really consider dating an Asian guy.
I occasionally felt played, as if he was pulling out some shiny tricks to
show a lefty reporter he isn't James Dobson. But I also thought we
genuinely connected.

"My agenda is to try to do two things: to change the world and build a
business," Warren told me. I had read similar statements from him before,
and the saving the world part had always sounded scarily messianic. But in
conversation, his tone was so earnest, so nakedly committed to lowering the
divorce rate -- which he feels he can do through eHarmony -- that I felt I
should congratulate him on his good intentions.

full: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/06/10/warren/index.html

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