play ball

After Dodgers’ snub, Anaheim mayor invites Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Angels’ Pride Night

By · 16 comments
Mookie Betts standing with a bat in his hand.

The Perpetual Sisters of Indulgence may no longer be welcome at the Los Angeles’ Dodgers Pride Night, but they were invited to a Pride Night event that’s happening just 27 miles south.

The mayor of nearby Anaheim invited the non-profit LGBTQ+ advocacy group, which uses humor and religious imagery to highlight anti-gay discrimination, to the Los Angeles Angels’ Pride Night June 7.

“I’m inviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to join me for @Angels Pride Night at Anaheim Stadium on June 7. Pride should be inclusive and like many, I was disappointed in the Dodgers decision,” Mayor Ashleigh Aitken tweeted over the weekend.

In an interview with ABC 7, Aitken said the Dodgers missed an opportunity to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I think it was a missed opportunity to really err on the side of being inclusive and err on the side of standing up for our marginalized communities, especially on the eve of Harvey Milk Day. Especially on the eve of Pride Month,” she said.

The Dodgers were supposed to honor the LA Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at their Pride Night, an annual event that’s supposed to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion in baseball. While nearly every MLB club hosts one, the Dodgers’ event is typically the largest Pride Night in sports, as Outsports notes.

The Sisters were slated to receive the team’s Community Hero Award. Formed in San Francisco four decades ago, the group performs community outreach and raises thousands of dollars for different causes. Most notably, they were at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS, caring for patients and even performing religious services when the Catholic Church refused.

Their role in Dodgers Pride Night sparked outrage from the Catholic League and Sen. Marco Rubio. The Catholic League’s president, Bill Donohue, wrote MLB commissioner Rob Manfred a letter accusing MLB of celebrating a group that mocks Catholics.

“Don’t believe the lie that the ‘Sisters’ mean no harm,” Donohue wrote. “These homosexual bigots are known for simulating sodomy while dressed as nuns.”

Not to be outdone, Rubio fumed in an open letter about the Sisters and their preferred method of protest. “The ‘sisters’ are men who dress in lewd imitation of Roman Catholic nuns. The group’s motto, ‘go and sin some more,’ is a perversion of Jesus’s command to ‘go, and sin no more,” he wrote.

A couple of days later, the Dodgers caved to the Catholic League’s and Rubio’s hissy fits and disinvited the Sisters.

“Given the strong feelings of people who have been offended by the sisters’ inclusion in our evening, and in an effort not to distract from the great benefits that we have seen over the years of Pride Night, we are deciding to remove them from this year’s group of honorees,” the team wrote in a statement.

Unsurprisingly, the Dodgers’ acquiescence didn’t please anybody. Rubio used their reversal as an opportunity to score political points, blasting the state of California. “For once, common sense prevailed in California,” he tweeted.

The Sisters, meanwhile, issued a statement expressing their disappointment with the turn of events. “We are sad to learn the Los Angeles Dodgers have chosen to rescind their award, succumbing to pressure from people outside the state of California and outside of our community. We are disappointed they have chosen to un-ally themselves with us in our ongoing service to the public, many of whom enjoy the Dodgers heroic efforts in sports,” the statement reads.

In response, multiple LGBTQ+ organizations, including LA Pride, have pulled out of the event.

The Dodgers’ decision to rescind the Sisters’ invitation is reminiscent of the Pride Night controversies that played out throughout the NHL this season, as multiple players refused to wear rainbow warmup jerseys–with the backing of their clubs.

While Pride Nights are omnipresent across pro sports, the meaning becomes diluted when teams succumb to anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments on the very nights in which they’re supposed to be celebrating the community.

In recent years, the Dodgers have led efforts on LGBTQ+ inclusion in baseball, using last season’s event as a stage to honor the late Glenn Burke, the first MLB player to publicly come out as gay. Burke played for the Dodgers from 1976-78, but was traded to the Oakland A’s have declining the team’s offer to pay for his honeymoon if he married a woman.

These days, the Dodgers employ out LGBTQ+ at the highest levels of their organization. Billie Jean King and her wife Ilana Kloss are minority owners, and Erik Braverman is a senior vice president of marketing.

As of Monday, the Dodgers haven’t issued further comment on their regrettable about-face. But plenty of people have been sounding off on Twitter.

Scroll down for more reaction to the Dodgers’ snub, and the mayor of Anaheim’s outreach to the Sisters…

Don't forget to share:

Help make sure LGBTQ+ stories are being told...

We can't rely on mainstream media to tell our stories. That's why we don't lock Queerty articles behind a paywall. Will you support our mission with a contribution today?

Once Monthly Annually

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated