What S.F. can learn from Dodgers’ Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence fail

Since their founding in San Francisco in 1979, the group known for Catholic chic drag, philanthropy and street theater has engaged in joy and peaceful protest on behalf of the disenfranchised and powerless. A Chronicle archive search of the Sisters’ history reveals they were ahead of their time on issues now entrenched in our city’s culture and identity, showed no malice to others and almost always responded to hate with love.

But they became the center of a national controversy this month, when the Los Angeles Dodgers disinvited an L.A. Sisters chapter from an upcoming LGBTQ+ Pride Night in response to pressure from conservative forces — then the team clumsily backtracked and apologized when progressive supporters rallied in defense of the Sisters.

“This affair has been an opportunity for learning with a silver lining,” the Los Angeles Sisters said in a statement. “Our group has been strengthened, protected and uplifted to a position where we may now offer our message of hope and joy to far more people than before.”

What the discourse lacked when the Dodgers rescinded the invitation was a sense of curiosity. Politicking aside, who is this group, and what do they really stand for? What does history say about the Sisters and what they represent?

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were treated as an oddity when they first appeared in Herb Caen’s column on Oct. 17, 1980.  

“Who are the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?” Caen wrote in The Chronicle. “For the delectation of historians a century hence, Sister Missionary Position explains that ‘We are an order of gay men dedicated to the promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt. … Some of us do have regular jobs to support our habits.’ ”

There were more fundraisers in the early 1980s after the Cuban refugee bingo/disco night — for the Gay Games, radio station KPFA, the non-profit gay counseling service Operation Concern and multiple groups that benefited AIDS patients — but it was a more conventional protest in 1980 that launched the group into San Francisco’s consciousness.

When the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit college, refused to list a gay and lesbian student group in its law school catalog, six Sisters showed up to the school’s open house.

“Two-four-six-eight, are you sure your priest is straight?” they chanted.

In a letter to The Chronicle, Sister Missionary Position wrote that in older times some religious leaders would burn or torture gay citizens.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

“Now deprived of their abusive powers of the past, church officials content themselves with attempts to make us invisible,” the Sister wrote. 
USF President Father John LoSchiavo responded, calling the Sisters “disgusting, a cheap shot, and very vindictive.” He said gay and lesbian groups would continue to be denied recognition because “it would be interpreted as university approval and support of homosexual activity.”

Chronicle letter writers mostly agreed. The newspaper itself wrote an editorial backing LoSchiavo, calling the ejection “understandable” and USF leaders “well within their rights to apply Catholic principals to homosexuality.” And the school won, with the gay student group remaining unlisted.

Rage would have been understandable from the Sisters, but instead they used their unforgettable presence to engage in positive dialogue and advocate for voices in their community that had been silenced. They doubled down on sassy and subversive acts of love, continuing fundraisers and community events. They gathered advocates in City Hall, starting with Supervisors Carol Ruth Silver and Tom Ammiano, who fiercely defended the order.

Sister Boom Boom ran for supervisor in 1982, bringing levity to the campaign trail, at one point pinning a “Dump Dianne” button on the mayor herself. (Caen reported that Dianne Feinstein reacted with good humor.)

“I’ve been accused of making a joke out of our political system,” Sister Boom Boom said. “Even if that were my goal, it would be redundant.”
As time went on, the reputation of the Sisters spread, and chapters emerged around the world.

When Mayor Willie Brown and two supervisors tried to revoke a permit and force the Sisters to move the date of their 1999 Easter celebration in the Castro District, the board sided with the Sisters on a 9-2 vote. 

Local Catholic leaders tried to demonize the group in the Archdiocese newspaper — Archdiocese spokesman Maurice Healy compared allowing the Sisters to celebrate on Easter to “allowing a group of neo-Nazis to close a city street for a celebration on the Jewish feast of Passover” — but the Sisters were defended in a Chronicle editorial and by a flood of readers on the letters page.

My largest take-away from observing the Sisters since then is that they show up and do the work. They’re everywhere, whether it’s entertaining at a Pride Parade, cleaning up after a street fair or helping with whatever odd job is needed during a display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

When the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are involved in an event in San Francisco it’s a sign that joy is being embraced and everyone is welcome. They are controversial only because of ignorance.