Weddingbee Blog

I’ve seen a few rumors out there that are pretty disturbing.

Inter-racial matching

A few comments here and elsewhere said that eHarmony doesn’t offer inter-racial matching.

I was incredibly disturbed by this, so I called Stan to ask about it.  He confirmed that ethnicity and race has never played any role whatsoever in eHarmony’s matching system.  Never as in, never in the history of the company.

Each user on eHarmony can set their own racial preferences to whatever they want.  You can set it to match only people from your own race or ethnic background, or you can set it to match people from others as well.

Focus on the Family

Another rumor I saw is that eHarmony gives money (or has given money) to Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family had a radio program where years ago, they profiled successful eHarmony matches.  eHarmony never paid any money to Focus on the family for this coverage.  Also, eHarmony has never donated any money to Focus on the Family.  Never, ever.

I see statements like, “[eHarmony] actively contributes to organizations that fight against the recognition of LGBT rights and commitments” and I am not sure how to respond!  eHarmony has never contributed any money to Focus on the Family, or bought any advertising from them.

I’m not trying to defend eHarmony.  I realize that some of you have opinions about the company that aren’t going to change no matter what.  That’s okay.  I just wanted to make sure that the facts are out there.

Weddingbee Editing

One final rumor sprung up just in the past few days.  I read on an outside blog that “the eHarmony PR team appears to be copy-editing comments on the WeddingBee blog.”

This is simply not true *sigh*.  I posted a comment on my earlier post clarifying this, but that outside blog posted their story just a few hours ago… so I guess a new rumor is on its way.

It sounds like this rumor started out as a misreading of one of our bloggers’ comments: “This post was a long time coming and had to be reviewed by eHarmony higher ups several times and was edited in several places.”

I’ve noticed that a few people have interpreted this comment as suggesting that eHarmony edited the posts. That was definitely not the case.

The posts by the Bees were not edited by eHarmony – only Mrs. Penguin and I edit Bee posts. I did personally work with each blogger to edit the posts, with any changes approved by each blogger.  The edits were to clarify confusing statements, and to make sure it was clear when something was opinion versus fact. They were very minor, and I would be glad to post the originals.  Mrs. Cream Puff preferred not to make any clarifying edits, so her post went up as is.

As for the posts taking a long time to be published, that’s definitely true.  eHarmony asked if they could prepare a response, so I sent them the posts so they could respond. It did take longer than I had hoped to get the response published, which contributed to the delay in getting this announcement up. I feel awful about the delay…

Rumors

I know that rumors are a fact of life, and I don’t expect these rumors to go away.

I’ve had some bad experiences with rumors in the past myself.  When I was younger, I changed high schools when my family moved from LA to the suburbs.  I went on three innocent dates with a boy I met, and somehow the rumor got out that we had slept together.  Before I knew it, people were saying that I had had to move from my old school because I had to escape my “reputation”.  Other boys even told their friends that they had also slept with me.

In the two years I was there, those rumors never went away even though they weren’t true. They didn’t go away until I left for college up north, in the Bay Area.

I wasn’t sure what to do then, and I am not sure what to do now.  All I can do is publish the facts, and hope that one day the truth gets out there.

Sincerely,
Bee

ps I’d like to ask that everyone treat each other with respect – both in the comments, and out there in the blogosphere!  I’ve seen some personal attacks in the comments, and also heard that some people have sent not-so-nice notes to Bees that have left.  Please don’t do that.

I ask that you treat each and every person – whether they be a blogger or a commenter – with dignity and respect.  I have not been deleting personal attacks like I would normally be doing, because I don’t want people to think that we are censoring comments.  But please be nice to each other!  I would greatly appreciate it.