Must eHarmony Run a Gay Dating Service?

Blogging the case over at Reason and Overlawyered.UPDATE: also Dale Carpenter on Volokh.com Also DeNovo and Ex-Gay Watch join the fray. Also Rob Vischer at Mirror of Justice and Ms. Morality. Here's something new from Gay Patriot.

UPDATE: Must eHarmony Run an Adulterous Dating Service? Follow the links from Overlawyered and you learn about another lawsuit against eHarmony.com. This one from John Claasen, a lawyer who thinks failing to let him find a new girl before he is actually divorced is marital status discrimination. Weird thing is, he may be right.

UPDATE: Rick Rosendall's thoughts:

"I haven’t done anything up yet on this, but in brief I would distinguish between the eHarmony case and an adoption case in that the latter involves the welfare of a third party – the child. In the case of a dating service, (A) I am not inclined to make a big deal of it, and at least on face value the business’s lack of research on the gay population seems at least plausible as a reasonable basis for them to specialize on what they know about; and (B) in any case, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and if eHarmony is required to serve people seeking same-sex partners, then the gay dating service that I understand has launched in response to eHarmony’s policy should be held to the same standard and required to serve opposite-sex couples. What I seek is equality, not to cherry-pick benefits.

In the case of adoption, the welfare of the child is paramount. No one has a “right” to adopt a child. We are not talking about a pet shop here. It is a serious responsibility, and I don’t know any gay adoption advocates who focus on the rights of the prospective parents instead of on the welfare of the children. The point is not that gay people have a right to adopt, but that they should not be excluded as a class from being considered as prospective adoptive parents. The adoption process is not simple for anyone, and various factors are routinely considered including financial stability and other things. The close scrutiny that is given to any prospective adoptive parent is entirely appropriate. But there is no reasonable basis for automatically excluding gay people as a class. The standard must be the best interest as a child. There are thousands of children waiting for loving homes, and they languish in the foster care system because they are “too old” or have physical or developmental problems that cause them to be overlooked by most straight couples seeking to adopt, because those couples usually want a “perfect white baby.” Gay people and couples have disproportionately adopted the orphaned babies and children whom others refuse to consider, including babies with HIV. I know a couple who were foster parents of such a baby (this was before same-sex second parent adoption was legal in DC, which happened as a result of a 1995 court ruling, and which was upheld by Congress in 1999); baby Joshua’s life was all too short, and it was heartbreaking to see him at play with the breathing tubes going up his nose, but he could not possibly have been better loved. It is simply cruel to put one’s ideology ahead of the interests of babies like Joshua, who are better protected by legal adoption and by having two legal parents instead of one."

posted by maggie at 2:37 PM | Link | 25 comments  

Babies Without Sex

The inventor of the Pill (or so this British newspaper claims) says in the near future all women will freeze their eggs and have babies at leisure. Of course he's never had a baby. I suspect the taste for having babies in your mid-forties or older (I'm 46) is somewhat limited:

"Professor Djerassi is the man who invented the Pill, the first oral contraceptive, which triggered the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and which many would argue changed the face of society and sexual morality for ever — and not necessarily for the better.

The Pill gave us sex without children. Now Djerassi has turned that concept on its head. He believes the developed world is heading towards its next cultural revolution — children without sex.

"It is my own prediction that within the next 30 to 50 years in the Western world, many women, when young, will bank their eggs or ovarian tissue, have them frozen, and use them when they feel the time is right for them to have a child," he says. "It will become commonplace.

"The world has changed. The days are past in which women in countries like Britain have economic dependence on their husbands and take care of the children.

"The days are past when women looked after children and nothing else. Women have careers now. They are better educated, more affluent and healthier on the whole, and many are now living into their 80s.

"They postpone having children until later and then they forget — or remember too late. Soon there will be nothing to stop a woman freezing her eggs when they are at their healthiest and then using them later on in life."

posted by maggie at 11:00 AM | Link | 0 comments  

Why Do Women Get Pregnant?

With over a million abortions every year, Naomi Schaefer Riley asks a good question in the June 1 Opinion Journal. (I'm less persuaded by her firm answer, but it is a really good question):

". . .In a recent column Atul Gawande, a guest op-ed writer for the New York Times, even went so far as to say that adult women get pregnant unintentionally because they don't understand how to use birth control properly. "The trouble appears to be blindness to how easy it is to get pregnant and what it takes to make birth control really work."

A surgeon, Dr. Gawande was trying to find a medically plausible explanation for the sad fact that there are 1.3 million abortions in the U.S. and that about half are performed on women over the age of 25. It's an interesting problem. Three-quarters of American women tell pollsters that they think abortion is morally wrong in at least some circumstances. The most common exceptions mentioned--rape, incest and life of the mother--are in fact the least common reasons women have abortions. So what gives?

Maybe the answer is obvious: Women get pregnant because they want to have babies. As Kay S. Hymowitz, author of "Marriage and Caste in America," puts it, "There isn't really a bright line between wanted and unwanted pregnancies." There are plenty of women who become careless about birth control on purpose. Whether they're suburban professionals with two sons who really want a daughter or poor inner-city women who hope their boyfriends will stay around if there is a child in the picture, women will often subvert their better judgment to fulfill a biological urge.

This is not the sort of sentiment that sits well with feminists--or with anyone, for that matter, who believes women are the ones thinking with their heads instead of their hormones. But according to the Guttmacher Institute, there are about three million unintended pregnancies in the U.S. every year, and six in 10 U.S. women having abortions are already mothers. More than half intend to have (more) children in the future. These ladies know exactly how one gets pregnant, and how one does not. . ."

posted by maggie at 10:08 AM | Link | 2 comments  

Lambda: Legal LGBT Advances

A summary from Lambda Legal here.
posted by maggie at 10:04 AM | Link | 0 comments  

eHarmony sued for failing to provide gay dating/marriage services

From a Reuters report posted in the May 31, 2007 New York Times. The adoption biz case in Arizona reported earlier suggests this lawsuit has legs:

"The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.

Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a “men seeking men” or “women seeking women” option.

They were seeking to make it a class action lawsuit on behalf of gays and lesbians denied access to the dating service.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had strong early ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family.

It has more than 12 million registered users, and heavy television advertising has made it one of the nation’s biggest Internet dating sites.

Carlson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, tried to use the site’s dating services in February 2007. When she was denied access, she wrote to eHarmony explaining its anti-gay policy was discriminatory under California law but the company refused to change it, according to the lawsuit.“Such outright discrimination is hurtful and disappointing for a business open to the public in this day and age,” she said. . . ."

posted by maggie at 10:00 AM | Link | 2 comments  

New Study: Love Songs Endure

A University of Florida study by grad student Chad Swiatowicz analyzing and comparing lyrics from the top 10 Billboard songs from 1968-1971 and 2002-2005:

". . .The most notable difference between the song lyrics of the two eras was the prevalence of bad language in today’s songs, Swiatowicz said. Many of the words, particularly in rap songs, are blatantly sexual and would have been considered obscene in the 1960s, he said. . .

Swiatowicz analyzed the lyrics of the year’s 10 most popular songs listed in Billboard’s online archives for two eras, 2002-2005 and 1968-1971. He found that 24 of the 40 songs in the modern era — 60 percent — and half the songs of the classic era were devoted to the subject of love and relationships.

From “Sunshine of Your Love” in 1968 to “Crazy in Love” in 2003, and “I Can’t Get Next to You” to “I’m With You” from 1969 and 2003, the songs are variations on similar themes.

. . .The subject of infidelity came up far more frequently in the modern era, perhaps because younger people were more likely to grow up in families where parents had divorced, he said.

. . .Another difference between the two eras is that songs from the classic period address broader social issues, as with “People Got to Be Free,” “Indian Reservation” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Swiatowicz said. . . .

“In the modern era, a lot of these songs were more individualistic, treating subjects like self-esteem and personal issues, such as depression or anxiety,” he said. . ."

posted by maggie at 9:54 AM | Link | 0 comments  

N. Ireland Churches Fear New Restrictions on Tax Exemption

Via Religion Clause, a story in Belfast Today:

"New moves threaten church status claim

THE tax-exempt charity status of churches across Northern Ireland could be called into question under new "politically correct" legislation, it is claimed.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Social Development said it is proposed to make all charities in Northern Ireland demonstrate their public benefit in order to retain charitable status.

Under present law charities in Northern Ireland are eligible to claim almost 30 per cent tax back on donations from taxpayers and the administrative requirements for the procedure are minimal.

Callum Webster, Northern Ireland officer for the Christian Institute, said: “Our anxiety is that the Charity Commission will interpret ‘public benefit’ in line with the latest fads in political correctness.

“We are concerned that Christian groups engaging in cross-cultural evangelism or promoting biblical teaching on sexual ethics could have difficulty obtaining charitable status.

“It is important that these issues are addressed by the Charity Commission as it prepares its new guidelines.”

A spokesman for the Presbyterian Church said it did not agree that churches should have to take such a test.

“In our view that ‘the advancement of religion’ should be sufficient to confirm charitable status and churches should not also have to satisfy a public benefit test,” he said.

“The proposals do not make it clear how a charity would have to demonstrate that it
provides a public benefit.

“Surely this matter should be fully considered before stipulating that a public benefit test should apply.”

But a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Development emphasised that churches and charities had nothing to fear.

“The Department for Social Development (DSD) has met with religious organisations during the consultation periods,” she said.

“There is nothing to fear from legislation that is seeking to address concerns about the regulation of charities in Northern Ireland, and to ensure transparency and public accountability.

“DSD and the Charity Commission will work with all charities to support them in meeting their requirements under the proposed legislation.”

She said the public benefit test was already law in Scotland and that it is being brought into England and Wales in the form of guidance on charity legislation there."

posted by maggie at 2:19 PM | Link | 0 comments  

U.K Academic: Ban Schools From Teaching Marriage is Good

The May 31, 2007 Daily Mail has this story:

"DON'T TEACH THAT MARRIAGE IS BEST SAY ACADEMICS"

ACADEMICS are calling for teachers to be banned from promoting marriage in the classroom.

They say homosexuality must be given equal status to stop the spread of 'bigoted' attitudes in schools and university campuses.

Current Government guidance on sex education says children must be taught 'the importance of marriage for family life'. Teachers are also permitted to voice their opposition to homosexuality if it stems from personal or religious conviction. This allows faith schools to teach that same- sex relationships are at odds with their religion.

But members of the University and College Union representing 120,000 lecturers are calling for a change in the law to stop teachers telling children that marriage is superior to gay partnerships. This would apply to all teachers, including staff in faith schools. Delegates at the union's annual congress in Bournemouth were critical of recently-passed gay rights laws which failed to ban teachers from expressing personal views on homosexuality. They said the legislation, which is aimed at banning discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, did not go far enough. Delegates unanimously backed a motion demanding an end to 'negative characterisations' of gay lifestyles.

Alan Whitaker, from Oxford and Cherwell Valley College in Oxfordshire, said: 'They (the new regulations) did nothing to stop the negative characterisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender lifestyles by teachers. 'The regulations actually say that there is nothing to stop teachers proclaiming the superiority of heterosexual marriage. 'The regulations say it's unlawful to characterise same-sex relationships as inferior. But to my mind it's rather difficult to see how you can do the one without implying you are doing the other.' He added: 'Legislation cannot do all the work. It may remove the injustice but it cannot change attitudes. 'If attitudes are to change that will come about as a result of education. 'And that makes it vitally important that teachers do not instil negative images of same-sex relationships and transgender people in those that they teach. Absolutely not.' . . .

But Stephen Desmond, from Thames Valley University, told delegates: 'We must never allow freedom of religion to be hijacked and used as a pretext to discriminate against gay and lesbian teenagers in schools.'

According to Government guidance, 'if a faith school (or indeed any school) teaches that the Christian and Muslim faiths decree that same- sex sexual activity is a sin, then the school will not be acting unlawfully'. It adds: 'Similarly, if a pupil asks a teacher his views on homosexuality and the teacher gives his view, then again, that teacher will not be acting unlawfully.'

Hugh McKinney, chairman of the National Family Campaign, said: 'There are differing views on how marriage should be taught in schools and this includes a faithbased and non faith-based position. This has to be fair all round.

'There should be an opt- out available for faith-based schools to allow teachers to teach what has traditionally been the case in the UK, and to reflect the majority of the population, regardless of orientation.

'The legislation has only just been passed so we don't actually know the legality or otherwise of any set of teaching at the moment.'"

posted by maggie at 10:25 AM | Link | 8 comments  

A Note on Comments Recently

I find that my tolerance for even the most gentlemanly and intellectual discussions of anal sex is, well, limited. So apologies to those who are trying to conduct such a debate on this site.
posted by maggie at 5:23 PM | Link | 32 comments  

New Poll from Gallup: Civil Unions and All Things Gay

Story in the May 29 2007 Christian Post:

". . .Today, 57 percent of the American public believes homosexuality should be sanctioned as an acceptable alternative lifestyle – the highest the Gallup Poll has recorded since 1982. Also indicating higher tolerance, 59 percent of Americans believe homosexual relations should be legal. . .

Revealing a long-term increase in pro-gay rights attitudes, 46 percent (up from 27 percent in 1996) believe same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid with the same rights as traditional marriages. And the percentage of those who say they should not be recognized by the law as valid fell from 68 percent in 1996 to 53 percent today.

On the question of morality, Americans were found to be nearly evenly divided. Since 2001, the percentage of those who say homosexual relations are morally acceptable has increased from 40 percent to 47 percent. And for the first time in the 21st century, less than the majority of Americans say homosexual relations are morally wrong (49 percent). Last year, 51 percent said such relations are morally wrong.
At the same time, the majority of Americans say sex between an unmarried man and woman (59 percent), divorce (65 percent), and having a baby outside or marriage (54 percent) is morally acceptable.

As debates continue over the origin or cause of homosexuality, the Gallup Poll found that an increasing percentage of Americans believe homosexuality is something a person is born with. The poll showed 42 percent express such a view compared to 13 percent in 1977. And the percentage of Americans who believe homosexuality is due to factors such as upbringing and environment fell from 56 percent in 1977 to 35 percent today.

Among those who believe homosexuals are born that way, 78 percent say homosexuality should be considered an acceptable lifestyle. In contrast, among those who believe homosexuality is caused by upbringing or environmental factors, only 30 percent say it should be acceptable. . .

The Gallup Poll found younger Americans aged 18-34 years old (75 percent) are more likely to express the same view than older Americans aged 55 years and older (45 percent). Women (61 percent) are also more likely than men (53 percent) to say homosexuality should be an acceptable alternative lifestyle, the poll further found. And highly religious Americans who attend church weekly (33 percent) are less likely to say it's an acceptable lifestyle than those who seldom or never attend church (74 percent).

Results from the Gallup Poll are based on telephone interviews with 1,003 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 10-13, 2007."

posted by maggie at 9:32 AM | Link | 2 comments  

Brad Wilcox on "Forbidden Fruit"

An excerpt from Prof. Brad Wilcox' Weekly Standard review of a new book "Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers" by Mark Regnerus from Oxford University Press:

". . .In Red America, especially in the South, Regnerus finds that teenagers--particularly teenagers hailing from evangelical Protestant homes--are more likely to hold traditional beliefs about sex. Sex is supposed to be reserved for marriage. In the words of one evangelical teen, "Sex is [a] great gift that God gave [us] and so . . . I think it should only be used then, when you're married." But Regnerus also finds that, despite their avowed sexual traditionalism, Southern teens--including evangelical teens--typically end up losing their virginity before teens who hail from the North, particularly Jewish and mainline Protestant teens.

In Blue America, by contrast, teenagers--especially those hailing from Jewish and mainline Protestant homes--do not necessarily object in principle to premarital sex. As Clint, an 18-year-old mainline Protestant from Michigan, puts it, "There's no reason . . . that, you know, you should save yourself for marriage in every single instance. . . . You know it's, it's a situational thing."

But surprisingly, teens from the North (and, again, especially Jewish and mainline Protestant teens like Clint) are more likely to abstain from sex, despite their avowed sexual progressivism. Indeed, in spite of his flexible sexual morality, Clint is a virgin who reports that he is glad he hasn't found himself in "that situation"--that is, having sex--because it's "one less thing to worry about."

. . .He also reports that 55 percent of sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex. Regret is especially high among adolescent girls, who are more likely than boys to report they were pressured to have sex, that they did not realize how emotionally involved they would get after sex, or that they felt abandoned in the wake of a brief sexual encounter. Not surprisingly, teenage girls who are sexually active--particularly teenage girls who have had more than one partner, which is the norm (as we have seen) among those who are sexually active--are significantly more likely to report they are depressed than their peers who are virgins. Kimberly, an 18-year-old from Utah, reports that sex "messed me up emotionally and physically. . . . I mean I was depressed for awhile but my friends helped me through it. . . . I think people don't realize how emotionally involved you get."

Forbidden Fruit offers a number of sobering conclusions: The vast majority of teens engage in sex before they turn 20; most teens (including evangelicals from the South) who support virginity in theory don't manage to practice it in real life; and teenage sex seems to exact a serious emotional toll on a significant number of girls.

Are there any grounds for hope? Yes. Since the early 1990s, rates of teenage sexual activity, pregnancy, and abortion in America have all dropped. And although Regnerus overlooks these positive developments, his work suggests that the abstinence movement has played an important and often unheralded role.

Consider one of the most important groups in the abstinence movement: True Love Waits. Regnerus estimates that more than 2.5 million teenagers have taken abstinence pledges since the campaign was initiated by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1993. Although most young men and women who take the pledge ultimately end up losing their virginity before marriage, pledgers are significantly more likely to delay sex by more than a year, to have fewer partners, and to abstain from sex before marriage, than teens who did not take the pledge. These behavioral changes, in turn, translate into lower levels of teen pregnancy and abortion among the millions of American teens who have pledged abstinence through True Love Waits. . . "

posted by maggie at 11:05 AM | Link | 2 comments  

WaPo: What Does it Mean to Be Manly?

A column by Laura Sessions Stepp:

"If you're wondering what it takes to be a man these days, check out Johnny Depp's wrist. As the unconstrained Capt. Jack Sparrow in the newly released "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," he wears a wisp of white lace tied just above his left hand.

A token of his feminine side? Perhaps. Or maybe it's just what Depp said it is: a trophy piece from a young woman.

Swish or swagger? That's the choice that men -- particularly young men -- find themselves facing today. As author Calvin Sandborn -- who juggled teaching and child-raising as he wrote "Becoming the Kind Father" -- says, society used to assign certain characteristics to men, including power, aggressiveness, professional success and autonomy. . . .

Parents have paid a lot of attention to girls, he explains, and the results are noticeable: His best, most ambitious students at the University of British Columbia law school are, for the most part, women.

That success may well be true in the years after college as well: The number of college graduates returning home to live is at record levels, and it's disproportionately male. While women are preparing to run corporations, what are guys doing? Playing the new Nintendo Wii?

"In trying to empower the girls," Sandborn says, "we implicitly sent a message that the guys were not as good. Women succeeded in creating positive new roles for themselves. What we haven't come up with is what a positive image of a man would be."

posted by maggie at 9:31 AM | Link | 2 comments  

THE MARRIAGE PENALTY: Shankar Vedantam

...Marriage, in fact, used to be an institution that sought to extend community ties. From princes and princesses in Europe who married each other to matches arranged between the less well-off, marriage was largely about broadening one's network of allies, friends and benefactors.

Not anymore. Modern marriage, sociologists Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian have shown, is really about two people setting themselves apart -- not just from the larger community, but from other relatives, including parents and siblings. The sociologists are not talking just about the starry-eyed couples of June, who have eyes and attention only for each other, but also married couples generally.

Contrary to the received wisdom of Republicans and Democrats and virtually every authority in the country who views marriage as the linchpin of social and community ties, Gerstel and Sarkisian have found that marriage actually tends to reduce community ties.

"Marriage and community are often at odds with one another," the sociologists said in a recent article in the journal Contexts. "Instead of bolstering community involvement, marriage diminishes ties to relatives, neighbors and friends."

Married people are less likely than the unmarried and the divorced to live with, visit, call or write relatives, according to data drawn from two national surveys: the 2004 General Social Survey and the 1992-94 National Survey of Families and Households.

The difference is especially large for heterosexual married men, who are likely to rely on their wives to stay in touch with even their own relatives.
The divorced appear to have stronger community ties than people who stay married, but have weaker ties than those who never married -- suggesting that marriage, even after it dissolves, still has the residual effect of reducing ties to relatives and the broader community.

Those who never marry, the sociologists found, are more than twice as likely as married people to socialize with friends, and are also more likely than married couples to socialize with neighbors, and to provide emotional support and practical help to friends and neighbors.

Married couples with small children are something of an exception. These couples tend to reach out for help to extended kin, friends and neighbors, thereby enmeshing themselves in reciprocal networks of friendship and obligation that have long underpinned community ties. However, in terms of spending time with friends and neighbors, Sarkisian said, these couples face the same "marriage penalty" as childless couples.

more
posted by Eve at 10:28 PM | Link | 0 comments  

SSM Update: Connecticut

A story in 365gay.com on a 'conservative' push to pass a state marriage amendment bypassing the legislature using the constitutional convention route, here.
posted by maggie at 9:25 PM | Link | 0 comments