After inviting and uninviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to their annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night event next month, the Los Angeles Dodgers backpedaled again on Monday and extended both an apology and a fresh invitation to the drag group.
In a statement posted to Twitter, the Major League Baseball team said, “After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families.”
The team said that it had asked the Sisters—who bill themselves as “a leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns”—to “take their place on the field” come Pride Night, and that the group had agreed.
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“In the weeks ahead,” it concluded, “we will continue to work with our LGBTQ+ partners to better educate ourselves, find ways to strengthen the ties that bind and use our platform to support all of our fans who make up the diversity of the Dodgers family.”
With brightly-colored habits and painted faces, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence form a LGBTQ+ advocacy and fundraising nonprofit. Founded in 1979 in San Francisco, the group became known for ministering to AIDS patients in subsequent decades, and has since expanded across the country.
At the Dodgers’ Pride Night on June 16, members of its Los Angeles chapter will receive the Community Hero Award in a ceremony prior to that night’s game with the San Francisco Giants.
The Sisters said on Monday that they were “proud” to accept the award. In a statement shared by Order member Sister Unity, the group explained that they had met with Stan Kasten, the president and chief executive of the Dodgers hours earlier. Also present at the meeting, according to the group, were a number of local LGBTQ+ community leaders, as well as several local and state government officials.
“A full apology and explanation was given to us by the Dodgers staff which we accept,” they said. “We believe the apology is sincere because the Dodgers have worked for 10 years with our community and as well they have asked us to continue an ongoing relationship with them.”
The Dodgers initially rescinded their invitation to the Sisters after backlash from several high-profile conservative figures and groups. In a letter to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) accused the Dodgers of “rewarding hate speech” by including the Sisters, whom he accused of “anti-Catholicism.”
“The ‘sisters’ are men who dress in lewd imitation of Roman Catholic nuns,” Rubio seethed. “The group’s motto, ‘go and sin some more,’ is a perversion of Jesus’ command to ‘go, and sin no more.”
Also vocally outraged was the president of the Catholic League, Bill Donahue, a longtime and virulent critic of both the Sisters and the LGBTQ+ community at large. In a statement last week, he accused the Dodgers of having “broken bread with the most despicable elements in American society today.”
“... Don’t believe the lie that the ‘Sisters’ mean no harm,” he warned.
The Dodgers announced that it was disinviting the Sisters last Wednesday, citing “the strong feelings of people who have been offended” by them.
Speaking to The Washington Post over the weekend, Sister Unity denied that the group attempts to mock Catholics or promote anti-religious views. She said that the Sisters’ look and rhetoric was part of a satirical strategy meant to expose bigotry and bring attention to the group’s causes.
“Gay humor is often iconoclastic,” she explained. “But we’ve never said we’re against the Catholic Church. We are not.”
Further backlash followed Dodgers’ decision to yank the Sisters’ invite, with several other invitees announcing they would pull out of Pride Night in protest. The LGBT Center of Los Angeles expressed that it was “deeply disappointed” with the move, saying the team had “[buckled] to pressure from out-of-state, right-wing fundamentalists.”
“We call on the Dodgers to reconsider their decision, honor the Sisters, and bring the true spirit of Pride back to Dodgers Stadium,” said the organization’s CEO, Jeff Hollendoner.
In a Saturday tweet, Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken invited the Sisters to Pride Night at Angel Stadium instead, hashtagging it “#CityofKindness.”
In their Monday statement, the Sisters noted that the controversy had “been an opportunity for learning with a silver lining,” adding that the “affair” had raised the group’s profile and allowed it to spread its “message of hope and joy to far more people than before.”
“May the games be blessed!” the group said. “May the players be blessed! May the fans be blessed! May the beer and hot dogs flow forth in tasty abundance!”
