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Online dating sites and the FA's approach to homophobia

Gay Mediawatch

Sam Milford

Thursday, 11 February 2010

As we find ourselves dealing with what will undoubtedly be another lonely St. Valentine's Day for many of us, here's a little gay mediawatch to raise your spirits… or at least so that you don't feel so alone...

The UK is trailing behind the States, where US based dating site eHarmony.com has just been fined $500,000 for failing to offer a unified service to both hetero and homosexuals looking for love.

Initially they only offered a heterosexual service but were successfully challenged on grounds of equality and set up a second site with the fairly unappealing name 'compatible partners'. The problem remained, however, that bisexuals had to register (and presumably pay) twice to find matches on both sites and were still therefore discriminated against. eHarmony has now forked out a cool half million in settlements and have merged the two sites. Result! Although the UK version of the site still has no option for gay love ("I'm a man seeking a woman" or "I'm a woman seeking a man" being the only choice when you register).

The Superbowl. It's the equivalent of the Coronation Street Christmas Day Special in the USA, with one of the biggest audiences on American TV. But CBS turned down the chance to run a teeny 30 second relatively banal but amusing gay ad this year. The ad was for a dating site called ManCrunch and features a couple of jocks who end up kissing (not very convincingly, it has to be said). CBS say they simply ran out of ad space... Meanwhile the ad's out of the bag anyway, of course. And sites like REALPride are busy linking to it. And ManCrunch didn't even have to pay. Clever people.

Football stadiums aren't known to be the most tolerant of places - and whilst much of the racial abuse has been stamped out, the homophobic chants and abuse continues. The last minute cancellation of an ad tackling the issue by the FA has caused a stir amongst gay rights groups around the country who have been putting pressure on the FA to deal with the problem of 'institutionalised homophobia' within the game. The viral version of the ad is actually very good and has now been released. An 'educational film' follows, we're told. The Guardian offers more insight into the debate and you can find out more and join the fight against homophobia in football at The Justin Campaign website.