
Christian Mingle must let LGBT singles use dating site after losing court battle - empressplay
http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/christian-mingle-same-sex-dating-lgbt-lawsuit-california-1.3663871
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elpocko
So they have been ordered to implement additional features into their website
to make same-sex matches possible, for types of users they don't want on their
site in the first place? I don't think that's right.

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zzalpha
What if it was a dating website that didn't allow African Americans or Jewish
people on the site?

Now what if it was a physical establishment? Say, a whites-only lunch counter?

Of course, some hold the position that no anti-discrimination law should be
applicable to a private business. If so, at least that's ideologically
consistent, though IMO historically naive.

But if you allow for such laws IRL, so to speak, then extending those same
laws to the online sphere is, I think, perfectly rational.

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elpocko
Your examples are not applicable because, as far as I understand it, they
would have to implement additional features to allow for same-sex matches.
There's no "no gays allowed" code on their site. Your examples are examples of
active exclusion, while this is a case of missing inclusion.

I don't think it's right to force them to implement this additional code. If
they had active anti-homosexual code it would be a different matter though.

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aethertron
The fact that the service was implemented such that it only matched men with
women, and women with men, could be interpreted as 'active anti-homosexual
code'.

On the other hand, one could argue there LGBT singles weren't excluded in the
first place -- the site just provided a less than satisfactory service for
them. I think this situation is very comparable to face-recognition technology
that fails to work properly with people with dark skin, and voice-recognition
technology that functions poorly with certain accents.

It's desirable that these services and technologies are equally accessible for
everyone. To make this a legal obligation may effectively speed up this
process. It also risks slowing development by restricting the use of
incremental releases.

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elpocko
I'm a programmer and in my opinion "active code", in this context, implies
there is actual code expressly written to fulfill a task (i.e., to not allow
homosexuals to match). While in this case, substantial parts are missing
(e.g., everything that is required to allow the site to fulfill the needs of
LGBT* users).

Should we call something that does not even exist "active"?

Edit: after thinking about it for a bit, I'm quite sure the site probably
actually _does_ have at least one clause written, somewhere, to make sure only
men + women match. Simply removing them wouldn't result in good UX though :)

~~~
aethertron
I program too. I get your perspective, I think. If we looked at the site's
source code, we (probably) wouldn't be able to identify any specific lines of
code that were actively anti-LGBT.

To see the complainant and the court's perspective, look at the functionality
of the site at a higher level. What does it do? It lets people match up for
dating purposes. LGBT people - a specific historically-discriminated-against
group - could find this as a useful service too. But the site software lacks
the necessary functionality to enable this -- and it doesn't need to be this
way.

So where's the 'active' exclusionary code? There in the program, considered as
a functional whole, not located at any more specific location.

