Hey, everybody! Hi, friends! Well, from beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. It's Thank God I'm Atheist. The podcast. I'm Frank Feldman. And, filling in for me, I'm Dan Beecher.

Well, Dan, you're back! Hi, everybody! Welcome back! Thank you! I'm glad to be back Stateside, as they say. Oh, yeah. International travel. Yeah. I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was province side for the, for the last week, but goodness. Thanks. Thanks to Kate for filling in. Appreciate it. Yeah, that was wonderful. I actually forgot to thank her on the show. So, yeah, thank you Kate. I was like, stop recording. I was like, okay, I forgot.

We're not, we remember to say it. We do appreciate when people are, are willing to fill in. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. It's a miracle. It is a miracle. It's a miracle that anyone wants to listen to the show. It's a miracle that we still do it. Yeah, that's probably true. 10 plus years still going strong. All right, well, Dan. Yeah. I got a story. Well, I hope so. That's the whole thing. Right here in our neck of the woods. Yeah. There's a,

a fine, fine institution of higher learning called Brigham Young University. It's a different neck. I would say it's the same woods, but a different neck down there in, in Provo, Utah. Yeah. It's a short jaunt, though. Yeah. Yeah. About a half hour. It's up in the car. Sure. 35, 40 minutes something like that. You know, it's, it's an ugly 35 though. It's a thing. Things just get worse and worse than the further you progress. Anyway, what, what's happening to down to the B. Oh, my God.

Of course, BYU is the Mormon university. Yeah, it is. It's not the only one, but it's one of them. No, but it is the flagship. Mm-hmm. It is, it is a fine, fine institution or so they like to believe. Oh, yeah, they might be in some hot water.

Well, they are under federal investigation. Well, for potential violations of Title IX requirements, which is the anti-discrimination in higher education, or maybe education probably. I think it applies specifically to, it definitely applies to colleges and universities in this country.

Wait, wait, it even applies, what you're saying is that it even applies to the religious private colleges in the country. No, no. So back in the 70s, BYU actually like sued the government and was like instrumental in getting religious universities exempted from Title IX.

I did not know that I did not know it either until the start of come up. They led the charge. Of course, because if it was the 70s, they were still like, what, you're going to make us do black people. I don't know about that. No, that's absolutely right.

And of course, they didn't quite know that the gay thing was coming down the pipe and along and more broadly, the LGBTQIA plus thing, which I'm a part. And I was a student down at BYU. You were. And they have this thing called the honor code. Right.

Which, and this is what's getting them in hot water because so this is actually wild that they're being investigated back up a little bit because this level of federal scrutiny on a religious institution of higher, quote, unquote, higher learning is both surprising and rare according to the Salt like Tribune, it typically happens only in places where there believed to be potential systemic and serious issues.

Yeah, that's all the religious institutions of higher learning. Oh, yeah, they're all problematic oral Roberts University Liberty University. You're telling me that like the fact that we're picking out BYU among that crowd. Yeah, they don't fucked up hard.

And I believe that Title IX is specifically about discrimination on the basis of sex. This is the one that has like where they're supposed to be. It applies a lot to like athletics. Sure. And making sure that there's good athletic programs for women, right, as well. These schools not just focused on men. Right. That works out great. Oh, totally. I mean, look at how large the volleyball stadium is. Yeah, exactly.

But what they're looking at in the world, what triggered this, obviously some complaints, but what the university did that got the students complaining was, do you remember back in the spring of 2020 BYU made a change to the honor code.

Okay, I don't think. Okay, I don't remember this. Okay, we even talk about it. I don't know. I don't know what the changes. It's wild.

So they removed a controversial section from the rules that banned homosexual behavior. Oh, a lot of students celebrated some openly came out as queer. I remember that there was that. Yeah, they tried to make it sound like they were softening up a little bit. And because they came out because school officials that told them it was okay. But a few weeks later, they clarified the same sex partnerships would still be

prohibited. Right. Even if the band was no longer expressly written. So now it's understood. Right. Yeah. You guys, we just being removed. It didn't mean that we're like changing the rule. We fixed it on paper. Okay. That's what we did.

Kids, if you're at BYU and you're listening to us and we, you know, you're you're surreptitiously hearing us. If BYU makes a change, check with us before you act on it.

Because we would have been able to tell you, you don't come out yet. Yeah. So anyway, those who acted against the instructions of the university by holding hands or kissing, they could continue to face discipline. Right.

And so what, what the, the investigation is looking at is how are they treating these students differently from the sort of opposite sex relationships and couples that are happening that are allowed to hold hands on campus.

Interesting. Right. And that's what it's really getting coming down to at this point. And they I would love it. I would love them to have.

I mean, in this country and at this time, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Like, of course, there's if it'll something will go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will be like, yeah, of course, they can discriminate. Yeah. That's going to be a theme, a running theme throughout today's episode. Yeah. Our Supreme Court currently is just, it's, we're not a good country. Anyway, that's, that's crazy, though, that BYU is being investigated. All right.

I'm going to talk about the Anglican Church. They're supposed to be the nice ones, right? At least they are nice by comparison to many of the others. They're just awesome. Yeah. So what did they do?

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