We had a nice chat with Jonathan Crutchley, the CEO of Manhunt.net's parent company Online Buddies Inc (nope, never saw that name on our credit card statement) and one of John McCain's most controversial contributors. Crutchley didn't have nice things to say about the site, which has the gays who go there to get laid in an uproar.

"I share your pain," he said about the new version of the site. "It's new to me. I don't like it either, but you get used to it." Asked if he's found anyone since the relaunch earlier this summer he said, "Of course."

As for our tale of evil gay-hating gospel singers cashing in on Manhunt.com, it's just not true. Crutchley told us that when the company tried to claim Manhunt.com back in 1998, but it was taken, so they got Manhunt.net instead. In 2001 they launched the popular website and trademarked using the name Manhunt for gay dating website. The company approached the gospel singers about buying the Manhunt.com domain name, but they said they were using it.

In 2006, the group stopped using the site and the domain name fell into the hands of Crazy Calm Media, who used Manhunt.com to link to their sex and hookup sites, including Bareback.com [NSFW, unless you work at a bathhouse]. In 2007, Online Buddies sued them for trademark infringement and won. Part of the settlement was ownership of the domain name, which now redirects traffic to Manhunt.net.

Yeah, way more boring than the original story. Now we're going to go and use Manhunt to see if we get used to it like Crutchley says we will. It's research, people. Research!

Friend of Gawker Rod Townsendtells us that when errant gays mistakenly entered Manhunt.com they used to show up at the gospel site (old screenshot seen here). Online Buddies Inc.—the company that owns Manhunt and discreetly leaves the word fuck out of its name—tried and failed to buy the dot-com extension and as of July, the original owners finally relented. Either they finally learned that gays aren't that bad (thanks to Ellen and Will & Grace reruns), or they just needed some cash. Probably the latter.

How much did they sell for, we don't know. But maybe Manhunt offered them a huge chunk of change so that they could have the dot-com runoff just in time for their disastrous relaunch. Well, we all have our price. Ours is $12.95 a month, or $30 for three months.

To settle the complaint, eHarmony is also launching Compatible Partners, a gay dating site. But the Compatible site, as proposed is not just separate; it's also unequal.

eHarmony executives have long insisted that they didn't want to serve gay daters because their site used an algorithm based on long-term studies of straight couples. Compatible Partners, which must launch by March, will use the same questionnaire as eHarmony — but the company admits it has no idea if it will work to find good matches. Compatible Partners users will see a warning to this effect: "The statement lets customers know that eHarmony, Inc. has not conducted research on same-sex couples so that they have the information they need to decide whether to use our service."

If anyone shows up that is; eHarmony will give away 10,000 free accounts, but it's hard to think that a dating service chaired by a conservative Christian will prove much more popular than, say, Manhunt, the gay personals site whose chairman donated to John McCain's campaign.

The politics of sex aside, the website's clearly going to suck. This should sound so familiar to people who build websites for a living: A poorly thought-out product, based on insufficient research, rushed out on an artificial deadline. But in this case, it's the government, not inept managers, who are ordering it up. They're from the government, and they're here to help your dating life! If gays can't get married in California, don't they at least deserve the benefit of their own pseudoscientifically valid hookups?

(Photo via Magicmud.com)