eHarmony Founder: Gay Marriage 'Damaged Our Company'

After he was forced to open up his site to gay users, Neil Clark Warren says he had to hire guards to protect his employees from furious conservatives.

BY Neal Broverman

February 13 2013 3:10 PM ET

The 78-year-old conservative Christian cofounder of the dating site eHarmony says same-sex marriage damaged his company, and allowing gay customers to utilize his site made some right-wingers angry and possibly violent, .

In a profile on Yahoo News, Neil Clark Warren spoke candidly about same-sex marriage and how a judge forced him to open up his website to gay couples in 2008.

"I think this issue of same-sex marriage within the next five to 15 years will be no issue anymore. We've made too much of it. I'm tired of it. It has really damaged our company," Warren said, "and when the attorney general of the state of New Jersey decided that we had to put up a same-sex site and we did it out of counsel that if we didn't do it we were not going to have any business in New Jersey — we literally had to hire guards to protect our lives because the people were so hurt and angry with us, were Christian people, who feel that it's a violation to scripture."

While Warren, who was at one time associated with the antigay group Focus on the Family, claims he wants to leave the issue of same-sex marriage behind and have the country draw together and be harmonious, he added, "I have said that eHarmony really ought to put up $10 million and ask other companies to put up money and do a really first class job of figuring out homosexuality. At the very best, it's been a painful way for a lot of people to have to live."