How LA’s drag nuns took centre stage in the culture wars

IT IS not your average group of nuns. In fact, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are not nuns at all. They are transgender and queer drag queens dressed in technicolour—or sometimes leather—habits, who raise money for local charities. The sisters’ fame grew last month when the Los Angeles Dodgers invited, uninvited and then re-invited them to the club’s annual gay-pride night game. The baseball team suddenly found itself caught between conservatives who consider the drag nuns an anti-Catholic group and liberals outraged that the team capitulated to appease the conservatives. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is filling Los Angeles’s airwaves with radio ads urging the faithful to boycott the game. Attendance on June 16th will reveal whether LA’s religious baseball fans feel the need to stop worshipping at Dodger Stadium.