Last week's dustup surrounding the L.A. Dodgers' dumb decision to disinvite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from their Pride Night at the behest of misinformed Catholics and conservatives like Marco Rubio has taken another turn: the Dodgers have apologized and taken it all back.
As of Monday afternoon, as the LA Times reports, the Dodgers relented, issued an apology for their earlier decision, and re-invited the Sisters to their June 16 Pride Night game.
“After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families,” the Dodgers said in a statement. “We have asked the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to take their place on the field at our 10th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night. We are pleased to share that they are agreed to share the gratitude of our collective communities for the lifesaving work they have done tirelessly for decades.”
Those "honest conversations" came about because many in the LGBTQ community, includng co-hosts of the event, called foul over all this and told the Dodgers they may as well just call the entire event off if they were going to kowtow to conservatives and disinvite the widely beloved Sisters.
In trying to placate one group of people — Catholic Dodgers fans who were told by Sen. Marco Rubio and Catholic activists that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are an "anti-Catholic hate group," which they are not — the Dodgers managed to piss off the entire LGBTQ community and many of their allies. And instead of removing what they saw as a controversial distraction, the team's management miscalculated in this culture-war dustup, creating a much larger distraction from baseball, and from whatever good will they showed in establishing Pride Night a decade ago.
At the heart of the controversy was the notion that the Sisters are mocking Catholic nuns, when in fact they say they are inspired by and emulate real nuns through their good works — even if it's done in a tongue-in-cheek way.
The pressure mounted quite quickly in the days following the decision. We learned last week that the LA Pride organization and the LA LGBT Center were both pulling out of the Dodgers' Pride Night, which seemed like it would imperil the June 16 event.
Then the mayor of Anaheim, Ashleigh Aitken, tweeted an invitation Saturday for the Sisters to come to the Angels' Pride Night on June 7, saying she was "disappointed in the Dodgers' decision."
And, as the LA Times notes, fans are tweeting that the Giants should consider sticking it to the Dodgers by inviting one of the Sisters to throw the first pitch at this Pride Night game on June 16, which they will be playing against the Bums at Dodger Stadium.
Sister Bearance Knows with the LA order of the Sisters went on CBS LA early Monday to talk about the controversy, and to brag about the fact that it's only resulted in $15,000 in donations to the Sisters (so far), and interest from across the globe in starting new chapters.
But, now, after flexing its muscle, the LGBTQ community and all of Drag Twitter can rest assured that the news is not not all about anti-drag and anti-trans laws getting passed— some good things still happen too.
According to the LA Times, "Dodgers staffers across all sexual orientations were vocal in their dismay at the decision" last week. And one anonymous employee quoted by the paper said, “We knew the Sisters would react, but we didn’t have a feel for how swift and strong the response was going to be and how it would pull in others."
That same Dodgers employee told the Times, after the brouhaha escalated, "We’d lose our Pride Night, [And] I don’t know how we’d come back from that.”
The Los Angeles LGBT Center posted a statement Monday, saying, "Today’s decision by the Dodgers to publicly apologize to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and roll back their exclusion from next month’s Pride Night is a step in the right direction, and we support the Sisters’ vote to accept their much-deserved Community Hero Award."
The Center added, "Last week’s debacle underscores the dangerous impact of political tactics by those who seek to stoke the flames of anti-LGBTQ bias at a time when our rights are under attack."
Previously: Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Others Respond to the L.A. Dodgers' Dumbness In Bowing to Marco Rubio
Top photo: ladragnuns/Twitter