Men are now allowed to search for men—and women for women—on the religious dating site ChristianMingle, which earlier approved only heterosexual couples. The website opened to gay and lesbian users after settling a lawsuit filed by two gay men alleging it violated California’s non-discrimination law. However, the new search function on ChristianMingle will probably not be very useful to homosexual users, as the website still does not reveal to them profiles with matching sexual orientation despite letting them view users of the same gender.

“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.

According to the lawsuit, ChristianMingle violated California’s non-discrimination law that disallows for-profit companies like Spark Networks, which owns the religious dating site in question, from discriminating against clients on grounds of sexual orientation. More specifically, the state law—also known as the Unruh Civil Rights Act—compels business establishments to provide full and equal accommodations to clients irrespective of their sexual orientation.

As part of the settlement, Spark Networks agreed to adjust other searching and profiling features to offer gay and lesbian singles a more befitting experience within two years time. It also agreed to pay each plaintiff $9,000 and as much as $450,000 towards their attorneys’ fees. The company however did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the agreement.

In an email sent out to media houses, Spark Networks said it has no plans of advertising ChristianMingle to gay and lesbian Christians or doing anything more than it has already done for bisexuals.

“Like all other companies, we must abide by the laws that govern our state and nation,” the email said.

Before the filing of the lawsuit, the website offered users only two options: men seeking women and women seeking men. Now it asks users to choose their own gender—between male and female—before revealing profiles of other users from the opposite sex. Users are allowed to browse through same-sex profiles only if they choose to do so but still cannot tell if those users share the same sexual orientation. Unlike most other dating sites, which specifically reveal to gay or lesbian users the profiles of fellow gay or lesbian users, a homosexual single who searches ChristianMingle for same-sex users would now end up mostly viewing the profiles of straight men or women.

“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.

According to Spark Networks, ChristianMingle, which flaunts itself as the largest online community for Christian singles, has over 16 million users. The company also operates dating sites for Jews, Catholics, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, Black Singles, Military Singles, Deaf Singles and even ‘Big Beautiful Women and their Admirers’. Each of these websites continues to operate in the same way that ChristianMingle did before the lawsuit was filed.

One of the pastors on the advisory board for ChristianMingle decided to part ways with the company after it decided to allow homosexual users.

“When I came on board, CM assured me that they would hold to the biblical definition of dating and marriage,” said Texas pastor Clayton Coates. “It hurts my Lord and it hurts my reputation as a husband, father, pastor and the reputation of my church to stay on the advisory board.”

The six remaining members of the advisory board listed on the website refrained from commenting when Atheist Republic approached them.

Benjamin Mann, president of Queer for Christ, believes there are gay and lesbian Christians who are looking to date but would not find any help with a website such as ChristianMingle.

“If the experience is already going to be limited or they’re going to treat this community as just kind of an afterthought, then why?” said Mann, a student at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. “Why benefit them? One thing about the LGBTQ+ community is, we recognize who our allies are. … If they’re going to intentionally just live by the letter of the law as opposed to actually creating a market for people in our community who might be interested in dating, that’s a very different scenario.”

At the moment, Lee says, most homosexual Christians use secular dating websites such as OKCupid to find suitable mates but that is not an ideal solution for them.

“Some of the apps that exist, especially for gay men, tend to get a reputation for being more for hookups than for relationships. For a lot of gay Christian men especially, there can be a kind of uneasy relationship with those apps, where they want to meet people, but not to be seen as looking for a hookup,” Lee said.

Mann added how admitting one is Christian on a gay dating site tends to stun most gay men and not in a good way. He believes if Spark Networks or a competitor were to create an app targeting the Christian LGBT community, there would be a significant market for the same.

Photo Credits: Hypeline