Shop With Your Conscience

I've got to admit that I'm really confused these days. Recently, courts have decided that eHarmony is not legally allowed to discriminate against the LGBT community by excluding them from their services. In general, I have to agree with the mass of the blogosphere when they say "who cares?" Why would we want to patronize an institution that has outright said you're not welcome? While I agree that discrimination should not be allowed, I also have to wonder why, in this age of free social networks and a million other LGBT oriented and specific dating services, are we concerned with whether or not eHarmony begrudgingly matches us?

I think there's another side that we need to be weary of here. Due to the nasty hatred eHarmony showed in their policies, other services grew up and flourished to serve our community. In fact, several other services, like Chemistry.com, openly embraced our community and offered tailored services for our needs. If eHarmony is now providing dating link for queer people, is that going to have a negative impact on the companies that have traditionally embraced us? eHarmony is the largest at what they do, after all, so will our community patronize them simply because it's name recognition? I would hope not.

I absolutely agree with the idea that discrimination needs to be eliminated in consumer services. If a company like eHarmony is allowed to say no to gays, then what stops a Realtor from servicing straight people exclusively or holding back the better properties for their hetero clients? However, we as a community should be keenly aware of the companies and service providers that support us and do our best to support them. Good behavior should be rewarded, after all. And we should simply not patronize those institutions that chose to fight against us (we're not suppose to say "boycott" anymore because the crazy Right freaks out about it… screw them).

Hopefully, this ruling will be a wake-up call for eHarmony and they will start to actively reach out to LGBT people and find out what our needs are, but until then I say fuck 'em. That goes for every company that doesn't work for us and with us. Be sure to check out HRC's 2009 Buying For Equality Guide to find out what companies support us and what companies don't support us and do some smart shopping this year. Sure, I have my disagreements with HRC, but we're working toward the same goals, and at least in this issue, we see things the exact same way. Don't give money to those that don't support our community.