Hey, everybody. Hi, friends. Well, on a beautiful sunny day in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's Thank God I'm Atheist. The podcast. I'm Frank Feldman, and I'm Dan Beacher.

And coming up on the show today, Dan, we're going to be talking about superstitions, and unlucky numbers, and knocking on wood, so forth and so on.

You know, in the immortal words of one's Stephen Wonder, when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.

Oh, well, aren't superstitions not the way. All right. I love that song. That is one of the grand great songs of all time. I run it that it was sung by a hyper Christian. Yeah. Anyway, go on.

But, well, that's the thing though, Dan, everybody dislikes other people's superstition. Right. They're being ridiculous, but I'm being read totally reasonable.

Exactly. All right. First up, we have some stories of the week that we need to get through. And this one, you know how there have been recent court decisions, US Supreme Court decisions, that are basically now allowing businesses to enforce their owners. Religious.

They're sincerely held religious beliefs. And so you and this story is ultimately an example of what happens when you go down this road. Wait, you're saying that there might be consequences. There might be consequences. And we've heard of like, you know, employer-based health insurance being kind of an issue.

Right. With with this specific topic, right, where the employer doesn't like, you know, some some actually birth control. Right. So they refuse to cover birth control. This one has to do with a company that doesn't like trans people.

Well, why would they out there being a gender they weren't assigned at birth? It's it's very troubling. Indeed. It's a manufacturing company. In fact, and one of their machinists, Lillian Bernier, who's been an employee of the company since, which is called turbo cam, since 2019.

She began transitioning a year into her employment with them. And because they have a mission as a manufacturing company that has machinists in their employee that, you know, is all about God, right, which doesn't make an ounce of sense. That's not their mission. Their mission is not to give glory to God.

Manufacturing for Jesus. Right. That's not that cannot be a thing. That cannot that that's if you want to be a religious organization, then be a religious organization. Right. If you're making cogs and sprockets or whatnot. Right.

Which which printing Bibles shut the fuck up, which cogs and sprockets. Yes, I was thinking of the Jetsons. Of course you were. I don't know how that just happened. But anyway, so yeah, they're health insurance does not cover anything trans basically. No, no, no gender affirming care. Exactly. Right. Even though this is healthcare that their employee.

Because the company will not pay for gender dysphoria treatment, including, but not limited to counseling, gender reassignment, surgery, or hormone therapy, and related preoperative and postoperative procedures, which as their objective changed the person sex and any related complications.

So they're gonna not go in there. Well, Bernie is suing good because she feels like and along with her lawyers, they feel like this is the company's a New Hampshire that it is a violation of the States Human Rights Act.

And the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which of course is a federal law and the Americans with Disabilities Act. And so it's tricky.

Is there a danger that they're labeling trans a disability? I don't know. I don't know how they would be applying it. But I would assume. Yeah, I'm not. I mean, look, sure. I want them to use the law in any way they can to get this woman money.

Right. But that seems a little, that seems a little to me. I'm sure maybe some of our legal experts out there. I'm sure there's like something in the Americans with Disabilities Act that isn't specifically about, you know, disability.

Right. But this is applying to like I remember there being something about the American like just at work and some training we were talking about the American with Disabilities Act.

As far as like health care, like I'm fairly confident that it somehow extends into that it's more broad and it has been applied more broadly. That's kind of what I remember.

Then how you might expect it to have been applied. That's probably why they're using that act. For those of you not from these United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act is actually one of the few like successful good things that are legislatures have ever done because it actually protects people with disabilities.

It's quite substantially in ways that like, you know, when I went to London with my friend who is a quadriplegic, it became very clear that, oh, yeah, not every country has an ADA.

Yeah, you walk around England and you're like, look at all these ADA violations. Right. You are not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act. What's happening?

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