The Los Angeles Dodgers may have dodged a Bud Light moment after canceling plans to honor a bawdy collective of drag queens who dress up as nuns.
The team announced Wednesday it has reversed its decision to recognize the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at its annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night on June 16 after pushback from prominent Catholics who accused the drag performance group of mocking and denigrating their faith.
“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,” said the Dodgers in a Wednesday statement.
The team announced earlier this month that it would present its “Community Hero Award” to the Los Angeles chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a self-described “order of queer and trans nuns” founded in San Francisco in 1979.
The about-face came after CatholicVote, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, sent letters to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred asking him to square the decision with his previous vow to “keep ourselves as apolitical as possible.”
Catholic League President Bill Donohoe thanked his organization’s supporters for putting the squeeze on professional baseball.
“Yesterday, I wrote to Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, about this outrageous insult to Catholics, and we listed his email address,” Mr. Donohoe said. “Our huge list of email subscribers came through, and we are grateful for their input. We also want to thank Commissioner Manfred, and the Dodgers, for doing the right thing.”
Mr. Rubio tweeted: “For once, common sense prevailed in California.”
Erik Braverman, Dodgers vice president of marketing, said earlier this month the team’s Pride Night was intended to “foster an atmosphere of acceptance for all,” prompting Mr. Rubio to ask why the Dodgers had decided to recognize “a group that mocks Christians through diabolical parodies of our faith.”
“The ‘sisters’ are men who dress in lewd imitation of Roman Catholic nuns,” said Mr. Rubio in the Monday letter. “The group’s motto, ‘go and sin some more,’ is a perversion of Jesus’s command to ‘go, and sin no more.’ The group’s ‘Easter’ ceremony features children’s programming followed by a drag show where adult performers dress in blasphemous imitation of Jesus and Mary.”
CatholicVote called the drag performance organization “an anti-Catholic hate group which exists to desecrate and degrade the Catholic faith” by, for example, adopting stage names such as “Sister GladAss of the Joyous Reserectum.”
“We sincerely doubt that the Dodgers would give such an award to a group which made a similar travesty of the Jewish faith or Muslim faith,” said CatholicVote President Brian Burch in a Tuesday letter to Mr. Manfred. “Anti-religious bigotry of any kind has no place in baseball.”
The flap comes amid a backlash over corporate America’s embrace of woke messaging, a clash epitomized by this year’s debacle over Bud Light.
Anheuser Busch InBev has seen its stock price plummet after right-tilting beer drinkers launched a Bud Light boycott in April over the decision to honor transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney with a commemorative can. At least two executives have taken leaves of absence.
Professional sports have hardly been immune. The National Hockey League struggled this season after some players refused to wear the league’s LGBTQ Pride Night rainbow jerseys. At least one team canceled Pride Night altogether amid pushback from players, particularly Russians.
Last year, five Tampa Bay Rays pitchers declined to wear Pride Night logos on their uniforms, with one player telling reporters they did so over their religious beliefs.
For once, common sense prevailed in California. https://t.co/JAKVjIQdzi
— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) May 17, 2023
Mr. Manfred jumped into the political fray by pulling the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta over Georgia’s passage of an election-integrity law decried by Democrats as a voter-suppression measure. Since then, however, he has said he wants to steer clear of politics.
In December, Mr. Manfred said he wants to keep MLB as “inclusive and welcoming to everyone as possible and keep ourselves as apolitical as possible,” prompting a challenge from Mr. Rubio.
“Do you believe that the Los Angeles Dodgers are being ‘inclusive and welcoming to everyone’ by giving an award to a group of gay and transgender drag performers that intentionally mocks and degrades Christians — and not only Christians, but nuns, who devote their lives to serving others?” Mr. Rubio asked in his letter.
In their May 4 announcement, the Dodgers said they would honor the drag queens “for their countless hours of community service, ministry, and outreach to those on the edges, in addition to promoting human rights and respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.”
The SPI is also a registered nonprofit that does fundraising on behalf of “under-funded, small organizations and projects providing direct services to under-served communities,” many of which are LGBTQ-related.
The group’s 2022 Saturnalia Grant Recipients included Queer Expression Oakland, Deaf Queer Resource Center, and Queer Rebel Productions.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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