Why the C.E.O. Behind Match.com and Tinder Took a Stand on the Texas Abortion Law
It’s been a bad week for Match.com, the hugely successful and enormously popular online dating site. Earlier this month, the company announced that it was considering pulling out of Texas, where it had been doing business since 2003. That caused a major reaction among online dating sites across the country, but it was the company’s CEO himself that took the lead in fighting back.
Brian Amerige, Match.com’s CEO, is not a popular man. Like the Internet, he’s not all he seems. He’s been one of the most successful CEOs in the world, having founded the online advertising agency the New School and a number of other companies. Until this week, he had been married for two years to a woman named Lisa, who he had met at Match. He was also dating a woman named Stephanie, who is now his wife. But it was Stephanie — who is 25 years old when matched — that the company took away from him, not Match.com itself.
Like many other online dating sites, Match.com lets its users share photos of their romantic partners. These photos are then used to match potential partners based on a profile page. The company’s stated policies have always stated that people in same-sex relationships were allowed to use the site, as were people of the same gender. But as Match.com grew, Amerige decided that he did not want to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation or gender. And so in 2003, the company gave its customers the option to specify that they did not want to see photos of people of the same sex on their profiles. This allowed people with opposite-sex partners to continue to use it, and the company said it would never do anything to harm a person’s personal relationship.
Matching gay couples went smoothly
Amerige saw this as a way to combat
