You knew this would set ol’ Bill’s non-existent hair on fire: the Los Angeles Dodgers invited a drag group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, to a baseball game, and even apologized for a previous disinvitation. Cue a Catholic League tirade.
In a statement released to the press, the Dodgers said they had “much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.” On May 22, the “Sisters” met with Kasten and LGBTQ organizations, as well as local government officials.
There was no indication that Catholic leaders, clergy or lay, were invited to participate in these “honest conversations.” Only one side was listened to—the side that sponsors hate speech. The fact that gay and trans leaders agree with the vulgar anti-Catholic rhetoric and behavior of the “Sisters” means they now have no moral leg to stand on when asking for an end to bigotry against them.
Knowing full well how the ruling class in this country can no longer be trusted, I told my staff yesterday that it wouldn’t surprise me if MLB and the Dodgers reversed course. To that end, I personally went through our files on the “Sisters” and prepared a report on them.
Cool. So now the Catholic League claims that their bigotry is warranted, because the Catholic church was not invited to a conversation between a baseball team and a LGBTQ advocacy group. Why would anyone expect Catholic leaders to be invited to everything?
Two things intrigued me, though: one is that he told his “staff” something. He has a staff? What is it, one part-time secretary and the building custodian? He’s another of those people with a history of amplifying his constituency with a fax machine and a bullhorn, like Moms for Liberty, Libs of Tik-Tok, and Mel and Norma Gabler.
But the second thing…Bill has a dossier on the the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Of course he does. And it makes me like them even more.
SISTERS OF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE
Bill Donohue1979: This was the beginning of the Sisters. In San Francisco’s Castro
District three men dressed in traditional nun’s habit walked the streets.
One of them carried a machine gun. Then they went to a nude beach. It
was then that they adopted the name the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
1982: A year after AIDS was discovered, the Sisters were upset, but they
did not complain about the lethal sex practices that gave rise to AIDS;
rather, they complained about the “fear and prejudice” that it was
engendering. “Sr. Florence Nightmare” and “Sr. Roz Erection”
addressed the issue.
1987: The Sisters were granted a tax-exempt status after trashing Pope
John Paul II’s visit to San Francisco. The Sisters held an “exorcism” and
a “Condom Savior Mass” in Union Square. At the event, they featured
“the Latex Host” and referred to Jesus as “the Condom Savior.” They
also burned the Pope in effigy.
1987: They staged a “Hunky Jesus” contest, something they do every
year on Easter Sunday.
1989: On their tenth anniversary, they held many events, including one
with “Sr. Psychedelia’s” rise from the dead, and “Pope Dementia’s
Altered Boys.” They wore “only thongs and smiles.”
1989: At the “Condom Savior Mass,” the Sisters read from a text of the
“Condom Savior Consecration.” It said, “The Latex Host is the flesh for
the life of the world. Just as the Creator who has life sent us, we have life
because of the Condom Savior. Those who feed on this latex will have
life because of it. This is the bread that comes down from Heaven, and,
unlike those who eat not and therefore die, those who feed on this bread
shall live forever!”
1990: A staff writer for the Miami Herald said the Sisters were noted for
“carrying a 20-foot replica of a penis” at its street events.
1992: At a rally in Sacramento at the Capital Christian Center, the Sisters
held signs of the Cross with a pink inverted triangle in the place of Jesus;
the inscription read, “Stop Crucifying Queers.”
1992: “On Parade,” a publication of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay
Freedom Day Parade and Celebration Committee, published an article by
“Sister Dana Van Iquity” which said the motto of the Sisters is “Encroach
not on my crotch!” and “Leave my loins alone.” He described the day’s
events, including “Dykes on Bikes” and “Dykes with Tikes on Trikes.”
1993: At another rally at the Capital Christian Center, protesters held a
sign, “Queer Alert: Fighting for Freedom From Religion.”
1993: Twelve years after AIDS hit, they demonstrated in Washington,
“reeling in anger and despair” over five of their members who died of the
sexually transmitted disease.
1993: The Sisters were banned from the March on Washington’s stage
for being “too controversial and not the appropriate image” for C-Span
and “the movement.”
1993: The Sisters are seen as so offensive that they incur the wrath of
Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, the authors of a landmark book on
gays, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of
Gays in the 90s. They say of the Sisters, “‘Fringe’ gay groups ought to
have the tact to withdraw voluntarily from public appearance at gay
parades, marches, and rallies, but they don’t care whether they fatally
compromise the rest of us.”
1994: They served “holy communion wafers and tequila” to the
congregation at a mock Mass.
1999: On the cover of the April 1, 1999 edition of the San Francisco Bay
Times there was a full-page picture of a Sister superimposed on a crosslike photo with his hands stretched out, imitating Jesus on the Cross.
2000: In San Francisco, they held a Good Friday event where they
sponsored a fetish fashion show that provided “a chance to get spanked
and free “Sticky Buns.” Dr. Carol Queen held her “Good Vibrations
Dildo Fashion Show.”
2001: I petitioned the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Sisters,
citing multiple examples of “vulgar, obscene and bigoted material against
the Catholic Church and its members.”
2002: They celebrated Easter with an “Indulgence in the Park” event that
featured a “clown-drag-nun” fundraiser, along with the annual “Hunky
Jesus” contest.
2004: They spent the entire month of December bashing Christmas in
Los Angeles.
2008: San Diego House of the Sisters—The Asylum of the Tortured
Heart, which was founded in 2005, held a “Midnight Confessional
Contest” that gave prizes to those with the “hottest confessions.” It was
held in a gay bar.
2009: They held a block party in San Francisco where some of the men
danced naked in the street.
2010: At the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts winter gala, the Sisters
were asked to perform six musical acts in a “Nunway Noir” drag fashion
show where attendees could “bask in the bloody gore of occult film
screenings.”
2011: In a Daily Beast column, gay writer Andrew Sullivan called the
Sisters’ “Hunky Jesus” event a form of “blasphemy.” He was so angry at
them that he said, “This makes me feel like Bill Donohue.”
2018: The Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon hosted “Drag
Queen Storytime with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” despite their
history of anti-Catholicism. The event explicitly targeted kids 2-6.
2022: The Sisters gave an award for featuring Lil Hot Mess, “a man who
dresses as a woman for children and one of the leading activists behind
Drag Queen Story Hour.”
2023: A Sister won the “Free Choice Mary” pro-abortion award. The
man, dressed with a nun’s veil, wearing a bra and panties, was featured
holding a baby doll with a sign, “I Had A Choice.”
I gotta appreciate that not only did they raise the ire of Bill Donohue, but they outraged Andrew Sullivan.
I’m also amused that their great crime in 2004 was spending the entire month of December bashing Christmas in Los Angeles
.
I like it!
“Bill Donohue is mad again”
Also, sun is bright and fire is hot. Donohue is a human hemorrhoid (i.e., a real pain in the ass that does no one any good). Must be nice to have a self-appointed gig that allows you to vacuum cash from the know-nothings. Once again, another avenue of enrichment that many of us cannot take advantage of due to that ethics thing.
Blather, blather. If I hosted a similar group to a barbecue at my home, Bill would likely be screaming and yelling as well.
The difference is, I’m not corporate America, nor am I especially diplomatic about my property rights. So, he’d get a public invitation, “Bill has absolutely no say as to who or what goes on on my private property and if he doesn’t like it, he’s cordially invited to kiss my bare, hairy ass in Macy’s window during the New Year’s Day Parade”.
Any irritation after may well result in a deep fake of just such an image being published while I’m eating dinner with a judge.
And “protests”, aka criminal trespass will meet with castle doctrine engagement, sans firearms. I’ll just get out my knives and watch them run.
I’d probably end up with more welcome guests and need to cut more meat for the grille anyway. And special thanks to any who bring some extra veggies and portobello mushrooms.
Yes, I’m an omnivorous griller.
Hi, Bill! A question: I’ve read your little file on the good Sisters, and I’m wondering, after 1600 years, give or take, of Christian/Catholic hostility towards LGBT people, what’s your complaint? Turnaround is fair play, right?
He has a staff? What is it, one part-time secretary and the building custodian?
I couldn’t find anything on this online, but did locate a comment by myself from ’15:
citing Wikipffft articles from the time (the current ones give only CL membership claims).
As for the building and its custodian, from the same comment & source:
Aww! Some one forgot to invite the priest. Now him got a sad :-(
The Sisters are fun. They do good work…more good work than Bill or his entire cadre of small-minded bigots could imagine. As a long time San Franciscan, I’ll take the Sisters. Bill and his pals can go pretend they don’t touch themselves.
Right on cue…Sex Abuse in Catholic Church: Over 1,900 Minors Abused in Illinois, State Says. I’ve read this so many times before, I’m not bothering this time. I’m sure Bill will claim it’s a lie and propaganda. He’s incapable of shame.
“Two things intrigued me, though: one is that he told his “staff” something. He has a staff?”
Yes, his rod and his staff, they comfort him. Sometimes two or three times a day.
The Sisters are one of the best things to come (heh, I said “come”) out of the Pride movement and the AIDS crisis. They are small, but they are fierce, and they are also hilarious. They have done good far beyond their weight class, and the fact that they make Bill Donohue cry into his pillow at night is an added bonus.
That’s quite a dossier the man has kept on the Sisters. It’s even longer than the one my sixth grade teacher kept on me.
This is from the Catholic League website regarding some goings on in Eugene, OR in the 1990s:
My favorite part, which they don’t mention here, was Pope George Ringo.
That church, incidentally, is right smack in the middle of downtown, and of course they pay no property taxes on that valuable property. And, par for the course, they have confused parodying a chosen set of beliefs with bigotry.
There was no indication that Catholic leaders, clergy or lay, were invited to participate in these “honest conversations.” Only one side was listened to—the side that sponsors hate speech.
Orwellian blackwhite aside, Donahue should know damn well that his side — the side that really DOES sponsor hate-speech — did indeed have their say in this matter. That’s why the Sisters got disinvited in the first place.
Would the Sister’s agree to invite Catholics to every meeting as long as they are invited to every meeting that Catholic representatives attend?
(I would hope the Sister’s would provide proper party paraphernalia for each meeting.)
Bill Donohue doing his best to embody “the myth of ‘consensual’ sex” meme.
The DFW Sisters are staples of LGBQ+ events. They stand as shields against the inevitable yahoos with megaphones, and they do extensive charity work for groups that all too often get the short end of the stick from the Tx Legislature. Bill can go pound sand.
I love the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence! A great group with a great sense of humor (something sorely lacking in the Catholic Church–though I have a good friend who is a priest who’s not someone you’d type as a priest).
I know many of them personally, and they are all really good persons (out of costume), and great fun to be with (in or out of costume). Long live the SoPI!
Hey Bill, if you want to limit your life to the constraints imposed by your bronze-age mythology, knock yourself out. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you have any right to impose your retrograde rulemaking on the whole of society.
Reading this made me realize that the reason religious fundamentalism never caught on in Australia is that we regard them as closeted perverts. I wonder how many fish-net stockings and affairs with the secretary are hiding in his wardrobe.
I feel a degree of discomfort with the antics of the sisters because I know both priests and nuns who are repulsed and saddened by the crimes committed by the church. At the same time they do a lot of good work within the community and I respect them for that. However I am curious. Did they eat their latex host or was it too chewy and what flavors did it come in?
That’s not a dossier, that’s a list of accomplishments! I wish my annual performance review was as impressive.
I will be anti-Catholic as long as the Catholic Church is anti-me.
Ooooh, a dossier? Looks like Bill Donahue is becoming the J. Edgar Hoover of the Catholic Church.
Raging Bee, in a Walter Mitty sorta way, sure.
Sweden has been anti-catholic since the 30-year war. Unfortunstely the brand of lutheranism that replaced it was but a minor improvement.
Bill Donohue: what happens when you store the church wine so long it turns to vinegar.
Sweden has been anti-catholic since the 30-year war. Unfortunstely the brand of lutheranism that replaced it was but a minor improvement.
Bill Donohue: what happens when you store the church wine so long it turns to vinegar.
Doublet detected. Exterminate!
BTW I forget the individual names of far-right master cranks, probably because their style is so similar.
There was Bill O Reilly, and the one who got cancer, the one who weeps on TV, the one who recently got fired from Fox, and Sean Hannity. The one I think of as “Tuck Buckford” and… some Fox dude back in the 1990s who turned out to have written racist stuff.
Bill Donohue was not even on my radar.
Things I learned just from reading the quoted bits:
– Dude knows he’s irrelevant. And is terrified that more people might learn this too.
– Dude knows he’s taking his stories and rituals way too seriously. And is terrified that others might learn this too. (knowing this leads to knowing organized religion is a scam)
– He’s pretty much acknowledging him and his people are bigots and they were just looking for any random excuse to justify it.
– He is absolutely obsessed with the Sisters. Sounds a lot like an internet stalker to me.
– His thought process is apparently “Those people made me SO MAD! I have to write this down…” Who does that?
birgerjohansson, hard to get a reading of chaff on radar.
lanir, is it internet stalker or just simply projection?
wzrd1: Might be some projection of some sort going on. Loud conservatives are so incredibly fond of projection. But there’s definitely a whole lotbof sustained interest, too. Like, creepy levels of long term interest. Internet stalker probably isn’t quite right but he sure has the same obsessive drive.