In late February, Christopher “Chris” Yuan of Escondido used Goodstack’s website to order ChatGPT, seeking a $5-a-month nonprofit discount on the OpenAI product.
ADF suit on behalf of Christopher Yuan against OpenAI. (PDF)Yuan sought to pay $20 per user instead of $25 for an AI account to translate his “holy sexuality” products into languages including Chinese and Spanish.
Twenty days later, his request was denied.
Now his nonprofit, Holy Sexuality, is suing OpenAI in San Diego federal court. OpenAI, recently valued at $300 billion, is accused of “intentional, malicious and outrageous religious discrimination against Holy Sexuality pursuant to OpenAI’s facially discriminatory Religious Discrimination Policy.”
Holy Sexuality, the suit says, is “thus entitled to general and special damages, treble damages, a permanent injunction, declaratory relief and attorney’s fees under the Unruh Act.” No money figure is given, but a jury trial is demanded.
The Holy Sexuality Project is part of the gay conversion movement — employing biblical principles to “help” people shed LGBTQ behavior and identities.
In the latest skirmish of the culture wars, lawyers for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, aided by Rancho Santa Fe attorney Robert J. Reynolds, are hoping to score a second victory in a month.
In mid-April, ADF settled a similar lawsuit with San Francisco-based Asana Inc. — also citing Yuan as the injured party. Yuan was originally denied a 50% nonprofit discount for Asana’s project management software.
“People of faith aren’t second-class citizens in California, and tech companies in San Francisco cannot provide lesser services to customers simply because they are religious,” said the suit against Asana.
In a statement, ADF’s Mathew Hoffman told Times of San Diego: “Asana agreed to extend the same 50% discount to Holy Sexuality that it offers to other nonprofits, revise its policy to remove the provision that discriminated based on religion, and remove that discriminatory language from its website.”
IRS Form 990 filed by nonprofit Holy Sexuality. (PDF)The latest case comes in a 15-page complaint filed Wednesday — also in downtown federal court. It’s been assigned to Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo, appointed by President Obama. (Magistrate Judge Karen S. Crawford may handle some motions.)
In an ADF news release, Yuan said: “Our nation was founded on the principle of the free exercise of religion — a cornerstone of our democracy. Yet some corporations, emboldened by intersectional ideology and anti-Christian sentiment, choose to unlawfully discriminate based solely on religion. This must stop. California law protects all religions from discrimination. Equal treatment is the bedrock of our society.”
Hoffman, who serves as legal counsel for the Center for Free Speech at ADF, said OpenAI and Goodstack denied Yuan’s group a discount “solely because it is a religious organization.”
“There is a clear pattern of faith-based voices being pushed out of the public square by our largest technology companies,” he said via email. “This issue goes far beyond the loss of a discount — it’s about equal treatment for religious nonprofits. California-based tech companies can’t discriminate against their customers solely because of their religious beliefs.”
Hoffman concluded: “OpenAI still has its discriminatory policy, which sends a clear message: Religious organizations are second-class customers. We must hold tech companies accountable for religious discrimination.”
OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment, but I asked ChatGPT: “Tell me OpenAI’s Religious Discrimination Policy.”
The software began by citing the San Francisco tech giant’s workplace policies, which “explicitly prohibits discrimination based on religion.”
But ChatGBT added: “OpenAI’s usage policies prohibit the use of its services to discriminate based on protected attributes, including religion. Specifically, the policies state that users should not repurpose or distribute output from OpenAI’s services to discriminate based on protected attributes.”
Without mentioning the ADF suits, ChatGBT noted that OpenAI’s nonprofit discount policy has come under legal scrutiny for potentially discriminating against religious organizations.
“The outcome of the lawsuit may provide further clarity on how such policies align with anti-discrimination laws,” ChatGBT said.
In a “Response 2,” ChatGBT added:
“OpenAI’s policy on nonprofit discounts states that academic, medical, religious or governmental institutions are not eligible for its nonprofit program. This policy has been challenged in court, and the outcome of the lawsuit may impact how OpenAI applies its policies to religious organizations in the future.”
ADF has itself been the subject of scrutiny, especially a scathing critique recently on the HBO comedy show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
But who is Christopher Yuan?
The 54-year-old unpaid executive director of Holy Sexuality came out as gay to his mother while a University of Lousiville dental student hoping to follow his father, Leon, as a dentist.
With his mother, Angela (now 82), Yuan described his journey in the book “Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope.”
When Angela rejected her gay son (and then mulled suicide), Christopher returned to school. But he was expelled three months before earning his doctorate after becoming a drug dealer — supplying tons of marijuana to a dozen suppliers in 12 states, he says.
“In my world, I had become God,” he told a Liberty University audience.
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