A Christian non-profit recently settled its second lawsuit with a tech company this year over the refusal to give the organization a non-profit discount on software services.
Dr. Christopher Yuan, a formerly gay man who came to faith in Jesus and started to teach people about how our identity is in Jesus rather than the sins that some people revel in. He sought a non-profit discount on ChatGPT for his Holy Sexuality Project, but OpenAI refused to grant him the discount.
Yuan turned to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) to help him sue OpenAI. Less than two months later, OpenAI settled with the Holy Sexuality Project. The settlement was simple: OpenAI granted the non-profit the 20% discount and agreed to remove language from its policy that denied non-profit discounts to religious organizations.
“Christians and other people of faith aren’t second-class citizens in California, and tech companies can’t deny otherwise available discounts to customers simply because they’re religious,” ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler, director of the ADF Center for Free Speech, said in a statement. “OpenAI did the right thing by reversing course, agreeing to give Holy Sexuality the ChatGPT discount it offers other nonprofits, and eliminating its discriminatory policy.”
“Our nation was founded on the principle of the free exercise of religion—a cornerstone of our democracy,” Yuan said in a statement. “Yet some corporations—especially tech companies—emboldened by intersectional ideology and anti-Christian sentiment, choose to unlawfully discriminate based solely on religion. We are grateful for this victory and hope it serves to remind other companies that California law protects all religions from discrimination. Equal treatment is the bedrock of our society. I rejoice with this outcome, as it is a move in the right direction. And I hope other businesses will stop discriminating based on religion.”
OpenAI did not issue a statement on the matter.
Related: A New Curriculum Seeks to Help Families Understand ‘Holy Sexuality’
It’s the second victory for Yuan, the Holy Sexuality Project, and religious liberty this year. ADF and Yuan sued another software company, Asana, for refusing to grant the Holy Sexuality Project a 50% non-profit discount. The Asana settlement was similar in that it granted the Holy Sexuality Project the discount and scrubbed its non-profit policy of the language that discriminated against religious organizations.
ADF and Yuan issued the same statements — word for word — in the Asana case as they did in the OpenAI case. Asana said that it “will provide the discount to any qualifying nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) designation, as determined by the IRS” and that Holy Sexuality will “continue to use the platform, now with our nonprofit discount.”
Good for Yuan and his ministry. And good on OpenAI and Asana for doing the right thing and granting the discounts to Holy Sexuality and potentially other faith-based non-profits. Here’s hoping other companies that have similarly discriminatory policies will follow OpenAI and Asana’s lead.
It may seem like a strange thing to view discounts on software as a religious liberty issue, but if companies are denying faith-based organizations the same discounts that they’re giving to secular non-profits, it’s discrimination. We wouldn’t stand for discrimination in any other form, so religious non-profits deserve the same discounts as other non-profit organizations.
When tech giants try to sideline people of faith, groups like the Holy Sexuality Project fight back—and win. Twice this year, Dr. Christopher Yuan’s Christian nonprofit has forced major tech companies to back down and stop discriminatory policies against religious groups. This latest victory over OpenAI is a powerful reminder that religious liberty still matters—even in Silicon Valley.
Want to support reporting that stands up for truth and religious freedom? Become a PJ Media VIP today and get 60% off with the code FIGHT. Join us in telling the stories the mainstream media ignores—and in fighting for the rights of people of faith across America.
