Not many Christians have a conversion story as powerful as Dr. Christopher Yuan’s.
Delivered from a life of homosexuality, and even drug dealing which led to years in prison, Dr. Yuan now teaches young people and their families about God’s good design for human sexuality and what the Bible says about it. His nonprofit, Holy Sexuality, provides education and resources on these topics.
To accommodate the needs of his ministry, Dr. Yuan sought to purchase project-management software from a San Francisco tech company called Asana, which offers a discount to nonprofits. But when Dr. Yuan applied for the discount, his application was denied because, per company policy, “organizations that are … religious … in nature aren’t eligible.”
Such a policy violates California law. Religious nonprofits shouldn’t be treated worse than other nonprofits. That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom is defending Dr. Yuan’s and Holy Sexuality’s religious freedom in court.
Christopher Yuan’s dramatic journey
Dr. Yuan was raised in a non-Christian home with what he describes as “traditional Chinese values.” With tongue in cheek, he says those values consisted of three things: “obey your parents, do well in school, and practice piano.”
But he also harbored a secret that he kept hidden from his family throughout high school, college, and even his time in the Marine Corps Reserves. In his early twenties, he came out as a gay man and began living in the gay community, eventually breaking the news to his parents. Through that experience, his mother and father came to faith in Jesus Christ, and they began praying for their son to be saved too.
After Dr. Yuan left home to pursue dental school, he also became addicted to drugs and then began dealing drugs to support his addiction. As a result, his attendance and grades plunged. Three months before graduating with his doctorate, his school expelled him.
Two years after his expulsion, twelve law enforcement agents raided his house for drugs. Instead of graduating and becoming a dentist, Dr. Yuan went to federal prison for six years.
Through God’s providence, Dr. Yuan became a Christian while in prison. He discovered a Gideons New Testament in the trash and read the Gospel of Mark. And after being devastated by the news of being HIV-positive, he noticed a note scribbled in his jail cell that read, “If you’re feeling bored, read Jeremiah 29:11.” God’s Word transformed Dr. Yuan’s life.
From his prison cell, he eventually applied to and began to attend a Bible college. After his release from prison, he taught at the college for twelve years and became a pastor, author, and accomplished speaker.
Creating The Holy Sexuality Project
Throughout his early life, Dr. Yuan elevated his identity as a gay man above his true identity as a child of God. And over the past several years, Dr. Yuan has seen much of the same confusion he struggled with in the ongoing societal debate surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation. He recognized that these issues pose difficult questions for families, and he wanted to provide a resource for families to use with their children to understand the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality.
This led him to found the nonprofit Holy Sexuality in March 2023 and create a twelve-lesson video curriculum called The Holy Sexuality Project.
In these lessons, Dr. Yuan teaches about God’s design for marriage as a lifelong union between one man and one woman. The lessons also include teaching that God creates each person as immutably male or female, that these two distinct, complementary sexes reflect the image of God, and that rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of being made in the image of God.
By promoting God’s design for gender and sexuality, Dr. Yuan desires to help young people flourish and find true happiness.
A religious discrimination policy?
To accommodate the growing needs of his ministry, in December 2024, Dr. Yuan applied for the 50 percent nonprofit discount from Asana.
It’s not uncommon to see for-profit corporations give discounts to nonprofits. They understand the important role that nonprofits play in helping serve their communities and that nonprofits can’t always afford to pay the full price for their products.
But instead of giving the discount to Holy Sexuality, Asana denied the application, citing a Religious Discrimination Policy, published on its website, that refuses to provide the discount to any “[r]eligious organizations that exist to solely propagate a belief in a specific faith.”
Holy Sexuality met all other requirements for the nonprofit discount, but Asana denied its discount solely because Holy Sexuality is a religious nonprofit. Such actions are illegal under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which entitles all people in California “no matter what their … religion” to “full and equal” treatment from businesses.
“Our nation was founded on the principle of the free exercise of religion—a cornerstone of our democracy,” Dr. Yuan said. “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.”
For this reason, ADF, alongside co-counsel Robert J. Reynolds, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Holy Sexuality and Dr. Yuan. Religious discrimination has no place in our society, and corporations like Asana should be held accountable.
Holy Sexuality v. Asana
- December 2024: Dr. Christopher Yuan, on behalf of his nonprofit Holy Sexuality, applied for Asana’s nonprofit discount. Asana denied his request because Holy Sexuality is a religious organization.
- February 2025: ADF’s Center for Free Speech, alongside co-counsel Robert J. Reynolds, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Holy Sexuality in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
