Bad Habits

How Did San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence End Up on the Papal List of Heretics?

Even though the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence‘s mission is “to promulgate universal joy and to expiate stigmatic guilt,” not everyone has taken to their provocative tactics to bring attention to worthy causes (like their AIDS activism).

After this year’s annual Hunky Jesus contest, which is hosted by the Sisters every Easter at Dolores Park in San Francisco, Andrew Sullivan typed away from his new home at The Daily Beast that the event was a “smug, cheap and unfunny shots at the faith of other people” in a blog post, “The Tired, Lame Bigotry of Some Homosexuals.” Not ones to swallow a wafer not dipped in red wine, the Sisters then took to the SFist to respond:

Honey, we’re not out to prove we have balls. The point of Hunky Jesus is to have fun and chip away at those hardened walls between sex and spirit so often reinforced by the bigotry of so-called Christians who deny the embodied, fleshy reality of Jesus the man who no doubt sported a woody or two in his lifetime here on earth and most definitely came with his own set of balls.

Rail against the supposed grief we cause believers and wrap yourself in self-righteous anger if it makes you feel good–it’s your shtick and in these tough times I know you need a paycheck.

This isn’t the first time the Sisters have ruffled some Catholic feathers. Take a look back at our nun-errific retrospective.

During the 1984 Democratic National Convention, which took place in San Francisco, the Sisters staged a public exorcism of a drag Phyllis Schlafly, rubber snakes oozing our of her clothes. Another nun dressed like Jerry Falwell only to reveal a corset and fishnet stocking as he undressed in front of a crowd of 2,000.

The Sisters didn’t stop there. Three years later, in 1987, they performed another demon-cleansing ritual – this time for Pope John II, coinciding with his Papal visit to the cool, gray city of love. This led to Cardinal Ratzinger (John II’s successor) to release an open letter affirming the Catholic Church’s stance against homosexuality. Not to be deterred, the Sisters carried on with the mock exorcism and earned a coveted spot on the Papal List of Heretics.

In 1999, after President Clinton signed a proclamation declaring June gay and lesbian pride month, Nevada governor Kenny Guinn refused to embrace the first pride march in Reno, fearing that participation by the Sisters as Grand Marshalls might offend people’s faith. Duh, that was the point! The Sisters marched on, however, and brought 6,000 supporters with them. Now Reno has its own order of drag nuns – The Biggest Little Sisters.
In 2001 Catholic League president Bill Donohue caught wind of the Sisters’sacrilegious tactics and urged the IRS to revoke the nuns’ non-profit status. Though we think anyone who manages to raise money “by simulating sodomy while dressed as nuns, using a gas pump as a phallic symbol” should get away with avoiding taxes, Donohue asked for a boycott of Miller beer for sponsoring the Folsom Street Fair – a Sisters’ staple.

Then in 2007, it seemed the whole world lost its shit. “Not even Judas would have done something this despicable!” And this time the Sisters were just being good Catholics and munching on some Eucharist wafers! When video of Archbishop George Niederauer hand-feeding the nuns at the Castro’s Most Holy Redemeer Church went viral, reaching all the way up the Vatican, the Archbishop was forced to apologize. You think that would have calmed down the critics, but in came Bill O’Reilly scoffing at San Francisco values this and San Francisco values that.

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