Dodging the Sisters: Why Queer Nuns Keep Going Viral

In June 2023, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence went viral in conservative media for the umpteenth time. This time around, it was because the Los Angeles Dodgers had announced plans to honor the Los Angeles House of the order at the team’s annual Pride Night. A month before that all-California game against the San Francisco Giants, Florida Senator Marco Rubio had instigated the protest with a letter to baseball commissioner Robert Manfred claiming the group was offensive to Catholics. A short time into the swelling protest movement the Dodgers disinvited the Sisters, then re-invited them rather quickly following overwhelming backlash; in the end, the nuns’ presence at the game drew masses of protestors and supporters, and required a heavy security presence. Reporting on the scuffle focused on it largely as a story about sports, politics, and culture wars, not about religion, and it largely misrepresented or even overlooked the international order of queer and trans nuns at the heart of the story. So who are these nuns, and why do they keep winding up the right and delighting the left while most people on both sides miss the point that queer nuns, too, are real nuns? Come join us and find out. Melissa M. Wilcox (any pronouns) is Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where Dr. Wilcox organizes the annual UCR Conference on Queer and Trans Studies in Religion and the Holstein Dissertation Fellowship. Dr. Wilcox’s current research is on religion and spirituality in queer and trans leather, BDSM, and kink communities.