Adventist, Christian and Catholic Dating Sites to Include Gay, Lesbian Users

Online dating site ChristianMingle.com will now allow gay and lesbian users to look for same-sex matches after a settlement of discrimination claims approved by a California judge, who has also asked the company to pay $468,000 to the two gay men who brought the lawsuit against it.

The plaintiffs alleged in 2013 that Spark Networks Inc., which owns the Christian dating website and several other sites, violated California's anti-discrimination law by limiting options for gays. And the agreement now requires that the gateway or home pages ask the user to just identify as a "man" or a "woman," instead of choosing between "man seeking woman" and "woman seeking man," according to The Wall Street Journal.

The settlement applies also to CatholicMingle.com, AdventistSinglesConnection.com and BlackSingles.com, but not to the online Jewish matchmaker JDate.com, which was not part of the lawsuit.

Spark Networks will have to adjust searching and profile features in these websites to include gay and lesbian singles within two years, as well as pay $9,000 each to the two plaintiffs and reimburse them for attorney's fees with $450,000.

"Spark will not change the gateway/home pages to use the 'man seeking woman' and 'woman seeking man' prompts in the future unless Spark also provide similar prompts which allow individuals seeking a same sex match to enter and use the sites without having to state that they are seeking a match with someone of the opposite sex. As long as Spark operates the Mingle Sites, users will continue to have the ability to search for potential same sex matches using the site's text searching and profile building functions," the settlement reads.

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