The Los Angeles Sisters of Forever Indulgence will not be attending this year’s Dodger Pride Night. Not in an official capacity, anyway.
It wasn’t a reaction to last year’s incident, when the team’s Community Hero Award sparked national controversy when it decided to honor a satirical performance and activist group made up of cross-dressing queer nuns, considered blasphemous by some Christians. Massive protests broke out outside Dodger Stadium and raised concerns for the sisters’ safety.
But this is indirectly related to all of this.
The Sisters simply don’t have time to watch Friday night’s game against the Kansas City Royals. All events for Pride Month this year are fully booked, thanks to all the publicity they received a year ago during what founding members Sisters of Unity called “the Dodgers Chaos.”
“A lot of new groups are coming and inviting us to their events,” she told The Times in a recent Zoom interview, which also included Sisters of Los Angeles board president Sister Dominia and Sisters of Los Angeles board president Joan Cliff Sister June Cleavage. “This just adds a whole new dimension to our normally busy Pride season.”
“Like a beacon, we are a beacon for weirdos,” Sister Joan added. “People who get it come to us. All of these situations make that light shine even brighter. We’ve reached communities that are hosting their first Pride festivals, and they want us to be there to support them. Because they know… they Now I have sisters to rely on.
Last spring, the Dodgers announced that the Los Angeles sisters would participate in the team’s Pride Night celebrations, causing such an uproar from religious and other groups that the Dodgers reversed that decision in mid-May.
But days later, after a marathon meeting that included sorority Los Angeles leadership, Dodgers brass, California elected officials and local LGBTQ+ organizations, The team makes a statement Offering “our sincerest apologies” to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and family, and re-inviting the sisters to receive their awards at Pride night.
In the same statement, the Dodgers wrote: “In the days ahead, we will continue to work with our LGBTQ+ partners to better educate ourselves, find ways to strengthen connections, and leverage our platform to support all constituents.” Fans of the team.
Sisters of Unity and Dominican Republic told The Times their group has not heard from the Dodgers since last summer’s incident. Still, they praised the team’s continued efforts to embrace the LGBTQ+ community.
“Pride night is still going on this year, they’re advertising, our community’s presence seems strong, our community seems active,” Sister Unity said. “So we don’t really need to be involved in that, like, it’s not that important to us. What’s important is that the Dodgers and the L.A. LGBT community are so united… because that’s really what it’s about, that’s why there are gay people Pride parade.
“It’s about supporting those who have been pushed down so that they can be involved and their gifts can be shared and appreciated as part of the whole community. It’s always about building a broad community that is diverse, colorful and multi-voiced. This is This is how Los Angeles has always been and how it should always be.
The Dodgers declined to comment for this article.
All three sisters believe last year’s events ended up being a blessing in disguise. While negative reaction to the group appears to have fallen back to pre-chaos levels, support remains at an all-time high, they said.
“Our attacker gave us $3 for free [million] $5 million worth of publicity. free! Sister Tongyi said. “We can’t pay for what they end up giving us just by being in the news cycle.”
The sisters have received several awards over the past year, including two this month from the Santa Monica Speedway Performance Space and the LGBTQ+ Bar Association. Los Angeles. They spoke at a ceremony last week at the Kenneth Hahn Executive Hall in downtown Los Angeles. over (the flag will fly on a building in Los Angeles County).
The sisters also said financial donations to the organization, which are distributed to various charities, also increased dramatically following last June’s incident.
“I think what it does is make people more aware of our existence,” Sister Dominia said. “Once people started realizing all the hate we were getting, you know the death threats and everything that was going on, the community stood up and supported us. … Because every article said something that was completely wrong — we were anti- Christian, we’re a hate group, we’re this or that, and people who know us are like, ‘No, that’s not a sisterhood.
Sister Unity added: “There is now a level of inclusivity across the board. I have observed that this is a cultural revolution in a small sense in America, where the self-evident weirdos are suddenly no longer being pushed aside in order to People who look assimilated and people in suits can speak for us. We’re put at the spearhead of this movement and allowed to represent what it is to be queer, and that’s different and wonderful.
