Online Matchmakers Give Dating a Partisan Tilt

The New York Times ^ | July 22, 2004 | NOAH SHACHTMAN

[OESY]

KATY TABER doesn't hate Republicans. She just doesn't want to date them anymore.

Ms. Taber, a 20-year-old part-time student from West Palm Beach, Fla., looked for potential partners at Internet dating sites for nearly three years. But the services kept coughing up conservatives. That was not going to work for a young woman who has been to her share of teach-ins, and caught "Fahrenheit 9/11" on opening weekend.

So, like tens of thousands of others, Ms. Taber turned to an online personals site that caters to a specific political point of view. Now, after trading messages at loveinwar.com for a few weeks, Ms. Taber is going on her second date - with a nice young liberal from Pembroke Pines, about an hour away.

Since it began, the Internet has enabled groups to gather around common interests. So it was only a matter of time before the great divide between red states and blue states made its way into online romance.

"Liberals are buying liberal books, conservatives are buying conservative books," said Jeffrey M. Stonecash, a professor of political science at Syracuse University. "This is just another manifestation."

Most of the sites have popped up just in the last few months. And most of them trumpet a party affiliation from their home page. Love in War is a bit more subtle. Each personal comes with a mood meter, with the scale ranging from "Dean Angry" to "Clinton Mellow." And when Love in War members state their political beliefs (and they often do), they tend to echo the words of "LibGraphicDesigner," from Akron, Ohio: "Wake Me When Bush Inc. Is Gone."

"Because they're already on the site, because their viewpoints are right there in the profiles, you already know you're on the same page as the other person," Ms. Taber said.

Kelly Larson, 34, from Camas, Wash., signed up with www.conservativematch.com for much the same reason. She is a three-hour-a-day Fox News watcher who hands out Bush-Cheney bumper stickers at local parades. Her last serious boyfriend was a serious lefty, and they used to argue constantly. Eventually, the relationship could not survive the political differences, she said.

Now Ms. Larson, a full-time nanny and part-time Republican campaign volunteer, wants someone who shares her views.

"It's important that he has the same politics as me," she said. "It comes before religion in my book."

The appeal, like the Internet itself, can even cross borders. Richard Jones, a 53-year-old conservative financial adviser in Brampton, Ontario, said by e-mail that he had had trouble finding compatible dates in his hometown.

But Mr. Jones, who signs his e-mail, "God Bless America, God Bless the Military, God Bless President Bush!!!," found www.singlerepublican.com almost three months ago (through an advertisement at the Web site of Sean Hannity, the conservative firebrand), and thinks he may have discovered his "political soulmate" there. Though they have yet to meet face to face, he said, "we were both really touched" by the Reagan funeral ceremony.

More than just party affiliation is being shared, noted Brian Barcaro, a partner in Acolyte, the company in Evans City, Pa., that operates ConservativeMatch. "It's about the values they're holding, as opposed to what lever they pull," Mr. Barcaro said. "You might date a girl who disagrees with you on Iraq. But how to raise your kids, what are the proper gender roles, these are things that are fundamental to a marriage."

Ms. Taber, the student in West Palm Beach, said she was not ready for a major commitment like that, and simply wants to be able to have a decent conversation. Ms. Taber has dated conservatives. And when it came to issues of the day, they "learned not to discuss that sort of thing," she said. "In the end, I want to be able to share our mutual interests, and one of mine's politics. It gets frustrating after a while if you can't."

The people behind the political dating sites seem equally divided between true believers and plain old capitalists. Several are already in the online romance business and are looking to expand their reach. Mr. Barcaro, for example, said ConservativeMatch was a natural outgrowth of his company's long-standing www.catholicmatch.com.

David Singelyn, an inventor in Lake Elsinore, Calif., has put $6,000 of his own money over the last two months into advertising his www.democraticsingles.net site on liberal Web logs. The service is free, for the moment. But once a substantive membership base has built up, Mr. Singelyn hopes to charge $5 a month. "We'll take half the proceeds and ship it off to Greenpeace," he said.

John Hlinko, a Democratic organizer, has a slightly different goal for the dating site he helps operate, www.actforlove.org. Mr. Hlinko wants to use romance to enlist foot soldiers for progressive causes. "I've spent years trying to recruit activists,'' he said. "Now I'm using the oldest method there is."

Interest groups have been trying for years to use extracurricular methods to cement loyalty, noted Michael P. McDonald, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. The Sierra Club, for example, has long organized singles outings. Sites like Act for Love are just the digital manifestation of a long-existing trend, he said.

Mr. Hlinko started Act for Love more than a year ago. But the project quickly got sidetracked when he and a few early members started discussing their fondness for Gen. Wesley K. Clark. Together, they helped organize the movement to draft General Clark as a Democratic presidential candidate. When General Clark dropped out of the contest, Mr. Hlinko was able to turn his attention back to the site.

He was already familiar with online dating's benefits; he met his fiancée at match.com, the largest of the Internet romance sites.

So far, Act for Love and the other political dating sites are not known to have yielded any engagement rings. Most are so new that they have not built up a critical mass of singles.

But with political passions rising in an election year, those numbers could swell. "It does seem emblematic of a trend - people who wouldn't consider a mate of a different political persuasion," Mr. McDonald said.

"You still have the Carvilles and Matalins," he added, referring to the political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin, who are married and belong to opposing political parties. "But maybe they're from a different political era."

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Left-wing women are often attracted to right-wing men, but the reverse is basically unknown.

Because most left-wing men are limp-wristed flamers.

What woman, regardless of her political beliefs, is going to be attracted to someone who's lazy, won't work, can't defend her, can't fix anything, doesn't know jack about cars, guns, or machinery, and who spends his time reading Chomsky instead of Reagan?

[ItsOurTimeNow]

I could not be married to a liberal....too much of a values clash.

In college, I dated a liberal woman. She was even a "Womens Studies" major...fit the bill to a T.

In a casual conversation about marriage, she mentioned how she'd never be able to take the last name of the man that she marries. Said that she'd "lose her identity", and that she'd never, ever do it.

I dumped her the next day.

[connectthedots]

eharmony.com is much better. Been dating a lady for the last 2.5 months and we have much in common.

[twigs]

It IS nice to have that in common. I met my husband online and we just celebrated our 7th anniversary. We would never pass this new questionnaire that pairs up couples. We have a happy marriage, but we do squabble about politics and religion. I would prefer to agree on these issues. Yet, we are both happy and we've had to do a lot of learning about respecting others--not an easy lesson sometimes! And the really good news--he's getting more conservative. He's probably going to vote for Pres. Bush and he's getting to like Fox News. So there's hope!

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Get out!

Mrs IOTN and I met the same way, and just celebrated our 5th year together!