Men can now check out men, and women can search for women, on the religious dating site ChristianMingle, which previously sanctioned only heterosexual relationships.
The site opened to gay users after settling a lawsuit claiming it violated California’s nondiscrimination law.
But the search function likely won’t prove very useful to gay men or women — the site now lets them view profiles of the same gender, but does not specifically show them fellow gay users.
“My sense is that a fair number of gay Christians will probably not be interested simply because they’re not interested in giving money to a company that has to be forced by the courts to serve them,” Gay Christian Network Executive Director Justin Lee said.
The lawsuit, according to Christianity Today, argued that ChristianMingle violated California’s nondiscrimination law that prohibits for-profit companies, such as Spark Networks, which owns ChristianMingle, from discriminating against customers on the basis of sexual orientation.
In an email to The Washington Post, Spark Networks said it has no plans to advertise the site to gay Christians, or to go further to make the site work for gay or bisexual users. “Like all other companies, we must abide by the laws that govern our state and nation,” the email said.
Prior to the lawsuit, the site offered two options: man seeking woman, or woman seeking man. Now, it asks users their own gender, offering two choices, male or female.
Then it shows them the profiles of users of the other sex, but lets them switch to same-sex profiles if they choose.
Unlike several other dating sites, which specifically show gay users the profiles of fellow gay users, a lesbian who searches ChristianMingle for women now would end up mostly viewing the profiles of straight women. Same for a gay man.
That’s clearly not ideal for gay or straight users: “Nobody wants to have to search through a bunch of profiles of straight folks who are not interested in you,” Lee said.
Spark Networks said ChristianMingle has more than 16 million users. The company also operates Jewish dating site JDate; dating sites for Catholics, Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists; Black Singles, Deaf Singles and Military Singles; and a site for “Big Beautiful Women and Their Admirers.”
One of the pastors on the ChristianMingle advisory board parted ways with the company after learning it would allow gay users. “When I came on board, CM assured me that they would hold to the biblical definition of dating and marriage,” Texas pastor Clayton Coates wrote in an email to The Post.
The six remaining members of the advisory board listed on ChristianMingle’s website did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
