EHarmony launches online dating service for gay couples

As of Tuesday, eHarmony comes out of the closet.

The adamantly heterosexual dating site, which has accepted only male-female couples since its inception in 2000, is launching a gay matchmaking service called Compatible Partners, ( www.compatiblepartners.com).

But eHarmony’s new relationship with the gay community is like a shotgun wedding: The company agreed in November to start the dating service as part of a settlement with the New Jersey attorney general in the wake of a discrimination lawsuit.

Dating site consultant Mark Brooks said Compatible Partners will be watched closely.

“This will be one of the most scrutinized products in Internet dating,” said Brooks, who hasn’t worked for eHarmony. “They will have to introduce an A1 product.”

It’s not a comfortable fit for eHarmony’s founder, Neil Clark Warren, who based the original service – which requires applicants to fill out lengthy questionnaires – on his own practice as a psychologist.

“It’s what I did for 40 years,” said Warren, 74, who is retired but remains on the board. “I never had a gay couple.”

Warren formerly taught at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. Much of the early promotion of eHarmony was done by well-known figures in the evangelical community, some of whom preach against gay rights.

As part of the settlement, Pasadena-based eHarmony must make a “good faith commitment” to promoting Compatible Partners. But the company insisted that the only on-the-record interview for this report be with chief executive Greg Waldorf. That interview was canceled when the company learned Warren had spoken with the Los Angeles Times.

Brooks said Compatible Partners could be a winner.

“Niche products are proving to be very effective,” he said. “People are more likely to connect with a brand that serves it, specifically.”

Even Warren is finding out that gay couples might not be so different after all. He and his wife are friends with a male couple they met in Maine, where they live most of the year. “I asked them, ‘Are you guys committed?,’ ” Warren said, “and one said, ‘Yes,’ and the other said, ‘I think so.’

“And the first one said, ‘You’d better be!’ ”