Angelenos Go To Bat for drag outfit Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Los Angeles Times
Page A1
May 20, 2023

With their kabuki white face paint, electric blue humor and black medieval garb, the satirical nuns of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have long been California’s most recognizable drag outfit and among its oldest queer service groups.
Since 1979, tricksters in habits have ministered at gay bars, passed the plate for AIDS and cancer, officiated same-sex marriages and given succor to queer homeless youth.
Yet, until this week, the order had remained largely cloistered from the national anti-drag culture wars.
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The outcry over the “drag nuns” began in the Midwest, with a call-in campaign led by the conservative advocacy organization CatholicVote. ******* He went on to accuse the Sisters of “taunting the women religious who serve the poor in Southern California and around the world” — a charge the group rejects in the strongest terms.
“We are not anti-Catholic,” said Sister Unity, a founding member of the Los Angeles Order, who was to be honored at Dodger Stadium. “Being anti-Catholic would be anti-people, and that’s not what we do.”

Rather, the order draws inspiration from Catholic nuns — alongside religious sisters of many other faiths — serving the needy who are neglected by others because of their sexuality or gender expression, according to the Sisters and scholars and acolytes of the group.
“Many Sisters feel there’s a difference between what they’re doing and what drag performers do,” said Melissa M. Wilcox, a professor of religious studies at UC Riverside and author of “Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody.” “The Sisters are actually emulating nuns. They’ll say, ‘We’re nuns because we do the work that nuns do.’ ”
That work includes decades of charity, outreach, education and “bar ministry” in gay communities around the world. It also includes provocative monikers, such as Sister Porn Again and Sister Mary F— Poppins, as well as outlandish garb, chaotic pronouns and flip exhortations to “go forth and sin some more.”
“I like to think of [the habit] as a bonfire or a lighthouse, so that light can shine out into places where there are no resources and there isn’t a strong community,” Sister Unity said.

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“They’re the tricksters of the movement — they make us laugh, and laughing is powerful,” said Catholic activist Rosa Manriquez, who lives near Dodger Stadium. “I doubt there’s any nun worth her ruler and her rosary who’s upset about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”
To be sure, the order has a long history of provoking the church — most recently in 2009, when two Sisters in habit took Communion from the archbishop of San Francisco.

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But what could have been the ballclub’s Bud Light moment transformed instead into an impassioned defense of one of the world’s most outré drag communities. ****** Some, like Manriquez, the Catholic activist, see the skirmish as an early conflict in a larger war to come. “The population that I work with all supported the Dodgers,” she said. “Progressive Catholic organizations are allowing extremist conservative organizations to be the official voice of Catholicism, when that is not true.”
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Dodgers shouldn’t side with homophobic Catholics — invite the drag nuns
May 19, 2023 Los Angeles Times
Gustavo Arellano

If you’re a right-wing Catholic in the United States who professes to follow the way of Christ, what should you do in these troubled days?
Should you go down to the U.S.-Mexico border to help asylum seekers waiting to come in — the latest in the waves of Catholic immigrants who have replenished church pews in this country since the days of Lord Baltimore?
Should you visit homeless people and offer them food, clothing and shelter to fulfill the passage in the Gospel of Matthew that heaven will come to those who provide such care to the stranger?
Should you give solace to the meek, alms to the poor, comfort the shunned people Jesus surrounded himself with and advocated for again and again?
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The Sisters, who are mostly men, dress as nuns, give themselves bawdy names and are dedicated to “the promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt,” according to their website, while spreading a message of acceptance and charity.
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Here’s an idea, Dodgers President Stan Kasten: Invite the people who actually follow the tenets of Catholicism.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence originated in San Francisco in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Their dress was intended to mock the religious zealots who condemned them to hell, even as they tended to AIDS patients when few others would and raised money for refugees and the city’s poor. That legacy of giving is something the L.A. Sisters chapter continues. In the past year alone, they’ve done fundraisers for animal rescue barns, clothing drives, children’s story times and Long Beach’s St. Mary’s Medical Center and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.
What would Jesus do? What the Sisters do.

Sure, their performances can be out there — but that’s what drag is, and they play to the crowd in front of them, whether it’s adults or kids. Besides, laughing at how nuns dress or satirizing Catholic rituals is a time-honored tradition in American humor — just ask anyone who has attended a parochial school. Gosh, the Bill Donohues of the world better not see reruns of Sally Field in “The Flying Nun” or Molly Shannon’s old Catholic schoolgirl skits on “Saturday Night Live”!
That right-wing Catholic activists would target an organization like the Sisters shows how un-Catholic they ultimately are. If these self-described warriors for Holy Mother Church want to defend the faith, they should start by attacking the American bishops and cardinals who covered up for pedophile priests for decades and are still fighting sex abuse survivors who want justice — but that would take an actual backbone.
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Putin.

Putin had a hand in Brexit. He has a hand in trying to get France to leave the EU. He so wants the EU to break apart.

NATO? If Trump had gotten back into the White House, NATO would already be ancient history.

Oh, here’s a laugh. Ever hear of Calexit? The attempt to get an initiative onto the California state ballot to break us off from the US and form a separate country? The head of the group working toward this cockamamie idea had his headquarters in ….. wait for it ….. Siberia.

So why in HELL would any of us go along with this idea to finish the work of the Civil War and diminish the USA in every way?

Please do tell us.

…before dying of a brain tumor at age 77.

Where was the yammering for them to resign “for the good of their constituents” or for any other reason?

Look where that got us, Merrill.

The presidency is not for amateurs.

You keep pushing Marianne W and I’ll keep saying this.

She is not our friend. She has zero government experience, not so much as city council.

Marianne Williamson is successful in one arena only — kinda like Donald Trump, only with warm fuzzies.