But then, a curious thing happened. After submitting the survey, I was presented with a screen that had a curious message for me: “We are sorry but based on the results of your profile we do not believe you can benefit from eHarmony.com’s services at this time.” Puzzled, I went away, returning a week later. After all “at this time” indicated the problem was only temporary. But no, I was given the same response.

So I, being the indefatigable sort, shrugged and went on with my life. A year later, I decided to try it again. I created another e-mail account, built another eHarmony.com profile, and took their questionnaire again. And once again I was told that eHarmony could not help me at this time.

Now I was profoundly intrigued. I began using that most democratic of research tools, Google. What I found was astounding. After Googling phrases such as “rejected by eHarmony,” I found that a significant fraction of eHarmony applicants were turned down flat. The reasons listed were: being married (no), being divorced four or more times (no), or having some major mental problems (three strikes, you’re out). Neither one was true with me. So I dug further. I found an eHarmony forum, where users could discuss their experiences. I was not the first rejectee to come on there and ask about that. The responses of the eHarmony members were startling. The consensus was, if you had been rejected, then there must have been a good reason for this, and we’re glad you were excluded.

Such elitist attitudes were pretty darn annoying to me, but since they were profoundly unscientific, I told myself not to care about them. As an experiment, I created a third e-mail account and a third eHarmony.com profile. This time, when I took the survey, I answered each question completely randomly. At the end, I hit “submit,” and what do you know, I was presented with a list of potential matches. In disgust, I deleted my profile and logged off.

Then, a few months later, I finally found what I was looking for. On an obscure video sharing website (this was long before the advent of YouTube), I found a video of Doctor Neil Clark Warren being interviewed about his creation on a local television talk show. Towards the end of the interview was the question I was looking for. Why, the host asked, does your website reject some people?

“Doctor” Warren hemmed and hawed for a minute, but finally leaned towards the host and, with a conspiratorial tone, said, “Well, you know, some people just are not cut out for marriage.”

So now let us fast forward to 2011. Here I sit at my computer on the eve of my fifth wedding anniversary to my wonderful wife. I gaze over at our beautiful baby daughter, and I can sincerely say this from my heart:

Screw you, “Doctor” Neil Clark Warren. You were wrong. I am cut out for marriage. I win. You lose.

I was actually wondering about the size of the user-base at CompatiblePartners. It seemed to me that if a company were intentionally excluding me but then made a service so that I could be included, I might not be inclined to use that service! Especially considering it took a lawsuit to get to that point.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts.

Personally I wouldn’t use the site CompatiblePartners. This is because I spent 15+ years (from the time I was around 10 to my late 20s) trying NOT to be gay. At a point you have to accept who you are, rather than listening to an outsider who says they know more about you than you yourself do.. I just wouldn’t trust someone who claimed to know more about me than I do, and have them fix me up on successful dates. Plus I have doubts about the size of their user base.

For gay men looking for a relationship, I’d recommend http://lovetastic.com . It does not have the personality test stuff but has many “getting to know” kinds of questions in the profiles. It’s a site focused on finding other people who are interested in a relationship rather than the overt sexuality on many gay sites. It’s also written in Rails, is beautifully simple, and takes its relationship-approach very seriously (and actively removes accounts that violate their guidelines).

I’ve noticed trends towards people there wanting more than superficial things. for example, same-sex people wanting to get married (not it’s not just to prove a point). There are articles such as http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/08/BAG6RNEKBM1.DTL in the San Francisco Chronicle that talk about the trend toward taking relationships more seriously. I think these trends will only get bigger over time and are very healthy in the long run.