The culture wars erupted in Los Angeles last week when the city’s baseball team, the Dodgers, announced that the team’s celebration of Gay Pride Month would include honouring a group of drag queens known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”.
The group of usually hirsute gay men dress in costumes that present an outlandish caricature of Catholic women’s religious garb and misogynistic stereotypes. Founded in San Francisco in 1979, the group takes part in gay pride parades and also engages in charitable activities in the LGBT community.
Conservative groups such as the Catholic League denounced the inclusion of the drag troupe as anti-Catholic bigotry.
Robert Barron, Bishop of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, published a video in which he said: “Friends, it is hard to imagine anything more offensive than some of the behaviour of the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’.” The LA Dodgers rescinded the invitation.
The decision to disinvite the drag group prompted a firestorm of criticism from left-wing groups, with gay rights campaigners complaining the Dodgers had succumbed to bigotry.
The California Teachers Union issued a statement that included the comment: “At a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under attack across the country with more than 400 pieces of legislation filed in states, at a time when 45 percent of LGBTQ+ youth report seriously considering committing suicide each year, we should be leading with love and inclusion in California rather than sowing division.”
The Dodgers then repeated their invitation to the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”.
Gail DeGeorge, editor of the Global Sisters Report, said: “I could feel the outrage starting to burn within as yet another group that denigrates Catholic sisters stepped into the media spotlight.”
She added that she was “baffled and dismayed as to why it is somehow OK to so grossly insult and parody women who do so much good in the world”.
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