As the Los Angeles (LA) Dodgers prepare “to host sports’ largest Pride Night of the year” on June 16th, the team has faced severe pushback for their announcement of an annual “Community Hero Award” recipient. Among the list of honorees, the team included the controversial Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), a “queer and trans nuns” activist group that claims to use “humor and irreverent wit” to call out “bigotry, complacency and guilt …” After an uproar of opposition, the team reluctantly removed the activist group from their list.
SPI was founded in 1979, when three men marched through the streets of LA on Easter weekend dressed up in mock nun outfits, spreading anti-Catholic messages as well as promoting abortion. Since then, their mission has been “to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt” by fundraising, recruiting “nuns,” and lecturing to classrooms of students about “unsafe sex.”
The Dodgers’ attempt to jump on the Pride Month bandwagon by honoring SPI quickly backfired, as people began calling the team out for “alarming and dangerous normalization of anti-Catholic bigotry.”
“The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI) are an anti-Catholic hate group which exists to desecrate and degrade the Catholic faith,” president of CatholicVote Brian Burch wrote. “Their sole mission is to disgust Christians with the most grotesque acts they can imagine.” Burch then presented graphic examples of the “grotesque acts” of SPI and highlighted the continuous attacks against the Catholic Church. He also encouraged “every baseball fan in America [to take] three minutes to contact the team” and to demand they cancel their plans.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Major League Baseball (MLB) on May 15, sharing his opposition and posing several questions. In one question, he pointed out the group’s hypocritical actions. “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?” he asked.
“Businesses like the Dodgers who try to create some middle ground between support for the sexual revolution and respect for Christianity will ultimately find there is none,” Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. Ultimately, Backholm’s prediction came true.
The MLB team announced on Wednesday their removal of SPI from their programming, explaining that, “this year’s Pride Night has been the source of some controversy.”
“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've seen over the years of Pride Night, we are deciding to remove them from this year’s group of honorees,” the Dodgers wrote.
In response to their reversed action, CatholicVote released an updated statement from Burch on Wednesday.
“We are pleased that the Dodgers reconsidered their decision to honor an anti-Catholic hate group known for their gross mockery of Catholic nuns. While we continue to wonder how such a group was selected in the first place, this incident should serve as a wake-up call for all religious believers: unchecked woke corporations have no qualms about exploiting people of faith.”
