Golden State Today

A group of transvestites who masquerade as Catholic nuns and mock Catholic rites and ceremonies will be honored by the Los Angeles Dodgers next month.

The Dodgers announced Monday they will host the so-called "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence," who "have agreed to receive the gratitude" of the team organization during its home game versus the San Francisco Giants on June 16.

Who are the "Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence"?

In 1981, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Fernando Valenzuela honored actual Catholic nuns at a home game. Next month, they will host a group that seeks to mock female religious orders. | WBUR/Associated Press

---The group was founded in Iowa City, Iowa in 1979, but moved to San Francisco a year later. 

They "began their San Francisco reign... when three bored men donned full, traditional habits of Catholic nuns and walked through the city to a nude beach. The three quickly realized that their prank had the power to both shock and amuse," according to journalist Jessica Lipsky, who wrote that "the group has no affiliation with the Catholic Church and consists of flamboyantly cross-dressing men (and) transgender people."

--- In her book profiling the transvestite group, titled Queer Nuns, author Melissa Wilcox described its members as "a congregation blessed by a dildo dipped in poppers," or drugs that produce chemical vapors inhaled by homosexuals for their "mind-altering effects" and that "cause a euphoria that can reduce inhibitions, increase sexual drive, and intensify the sensations of orgasm," according to the National Institutes of Health.

Wilcox also described "yogurt-filled chalices offered at a funeral to represent the intake of semen" and a “Condom Savior Mass” where "participants vow to use protection."

---In June 1980, the San Francisco Examiner reported on the group's marching in the city's "Gay Freedom Day Parade" that month, describing them as "a dozen men, some bearded, dressed in drag as nuns" and the group's leader as a "reverend mother" named "Sister Solicitation... whose business card has on it a nun with a mustache." 

Also that month, in an article titled, Gays of San Francisco take to street to march in ninth homosexual parade, the United Press International (UPI) wire service wrote of "Sister Flagellation, a gay man in a nun's habit" marching with the group.  

The UPI reported that the "Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence... claimed they were an order of gay male nuns dedicated to "the promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt."

---The group's annual San Francisco "Hunky Jesus" contest, in which gay men dress like Jesus and participate in a beauty contest, is judged by  "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" members.

The most recent contest, in April, included a "Jesus and Mary-themed striptease by performers entered under the names Bob Exothermal and Aurora Rose... who met in the Bay Area pole dancing scene."

They won with "a passionate routine that involved Exothermal writhing upside down on a large wooden cross he had built, and Rose performing twists and splits in 10-inch plastic heels."

--- In 1995, the group toured 13 gay bars in order to ridicule the Stations of the Cross, dressing as the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and other biblical women, then shouting their adoration. 

"At the end of the tour, they commune on vanilla wafers and Jägermeister," wrote Fr. Mark Hodges for LifeSiteNews.

--- In 2007, two members of the group attended a Catholic mass and tricked then-San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer into giving them Holy Communion. 

Niederaueur, in apologizing for the incident, wrote that the group "have long made a practice of mocking the Catholic Church in general and religious women in particular."

--- Last month, the group held its annual mocking of Easter Sunday, in San Francisco's Dolores Park. The event's theme was "a bit more risqué than in previous years," said "Sister Tilda," calling it "influenced by musical theater, burlesque, peep shows, vaudeville, drag extravaganza, and some of San Francisco's most notorious memories such as the Lusty Lady venue and The Cockettes."

"You can't say that you've experienced everything San Francisco has to offer if you've never been to the Sisters' Easter celebration at Dolores Park," he told the Bay Area Reporter. "It's like visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris and not seeing the Mona Lisa."