eHarmony CEO Hired Guards Because of Treats by Anti-Gay Christians

If one bothers to actually read the Gospels, the overall message is one of loving others, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the homeless and an indictment of legalistic religious belief that focuses more on hate while displaying non-stop hypocrisy.  It is an overall message utterly lost on today's conservative Christians who appear to be a reincarnation of the Pharisees that the Gospel show Christ  consistently condemning.  And nothing gets the self-anointed pious crowd more full of hate than us gays or anyone accused of treating us as less than a vermin to be eradicated.  eHarmony CEO Neil Clark Warren found this out first hand after eHarmony changed its policies and created a gay dating/match site as part of the settlement in a New Jersey lawsuit.  Warren had to hire body guards due to all of the death threats and violence he and his family received from the :godly Christian" crowd.  Towleroad has details (and a video).  Here are highlights of Warren discussing the eruption of Christofascist hate he experienced: 

eHarmony CEO and co-founder Neil Clark Warren sat down for a chat with CNBC and Yahoo! Finance to talk about a variety of topics. One of them was the 2008 lawsuit with the state of New Jersey after which they put up a gay site. Warren says the threats from "angry" anti-gay Christians after they did that were so great they had to hire guards to protect themselves.

"I think this issue of same-sex marriage within the next 5 to 15 years will be no issue any more. We've made too much of it. I'm tired of it. It has really damaged our company. When the attorney general of the state of NJ decided that we had to put up a same-sex site, and we did it, we literally had to hire guards to protect our lives because the people who were so hurt and angry with us were Christian people who feel that it's a violation to Scripture.

Let's clear.  Far right conservative Christians - as Warren discovered first hand - are NOT nice people and they deserve ZERO deference.  They are dangerous extremists who ultimately seek to subvert the U. S. Constitution's guarantees of freedom of religion.  They are best defined by the hate and bigotry these display towards other not to mention boundless levels of hypocrisy.  They are a menace to constitutional government.

Online Dating Bigotry Exposed

I am glad to see that Chemistry.com is going to continue it's attack ads that point our eHarmony's anti-gay discrimination and highlighting its ownership by one of Daddy Dobson's buddies. Hopefully, Chemistry will gain market share at eHarmony's expense and demonstrate that discrimination does not sell. Here are some high lights from the New Your Tim's coverage (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/business/media/24adcol.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin):

The online dating service Chemistry.com plans to unleash a new campaign that seeks to depict its older and larger competitor, eHarmony.com, as out of touch with mainstream American values. The ads, which will appear in weekly newspapers and magazines starting Monday, attack eHarmony for refusing to match people of the same gender and for the evangelical Christian beliefs of its founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren. Dr. Warren, a former seminary student who has had several books published by Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian group, has publicly voiced his belief that premarital sex can increase the likelihood of one’s marrying the wrong person.

Chemistry.com is betting that consumers will prefer to associate with a brand that they feel more closely reflects their own values. The campaign imagines a world in which eHarmony’s values — as interpreted by Chemistry.com — were enforced in various ways. For example, one ad shows a sign on a beach that reads “No gays on beach, May-September,” while another features a motel sign declaring, “No premarital sex.” The copy in both ads goes on to assure readers that Chemistry.com does not judge or enforce any moral code on its members.

The ads were developed by Hanft, Raboy & Partners, an independent agency based in New York. “The idea behind the campaign is to globalize eHarmony’s practices, and ask, ‘What would it mean if America had to live by those rules?’” said Adam Hanft, the agency’s founder and chief executive. “What would happen if gays couldn’t go on the beach, or if some paternalistic source says, ‘If you have premarital sex, you can’t get into this hotel’? By amplifying it to that level, it points out the absurdity and discriminatory nature of their practices.”