Celebrating Pride with LGBTQIA+ Nonprofits
Happy Pride everyone! In the United States, June is LGBTQIA+ Pride month. This is because the last Sunday in June in 1969 was the Stonewall Riots. Often considered the start of the modern gay rights movement (though not the first riot) the first Pride parade was a year later memorializing the riots. We now recognize Pride months with parades and celebrations of queerness. And if you are new to this newsletter, donβt forget to subscribe below:
To celebrate Pride, I want to focus on a few nonprofits to explore the ways that queer nonprofits support the community. This will include organizations from the pre-Stonewall days and some that are more modern. To start, I want to focus on an organization which has been part of a controversy recently: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
What happened?
To celebrate Pride night, the LA Dodgers (or as my grandfather called them until the day he died, the Brooklyn Dodgers) wanted to honor an organization called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence because of their excellent work for the LGBTQIA+ community. This is an organization of gay drag queens who dress up as nuns (more on who and why later). While Pride nights run by sports teams are always controversial, this group in particular was labeled as anti-Catholic by right-wing groups. They were then uninvited by the Dodgers. This led to complaints that the Dodgers were trying to do Pride night without authentic queer representation. After many of the LGBTQIA+ communities in LA withdrew support, the Dodgers reinvented the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They also announced that there would be a Catholic day, which they had planned to before COVID.
Celebrating Pride without the Queer
My research is focused around understanding queer communities from a queer perspective. What that means is, instead of expecting LGBTQIA+ individuals to conform to the way that heterosexuals and cisgender people interact, to really support the queer community means supporting the ways that LGBTQIA+ people interact with each other and exist, whether that be in heteronormative environments or in a more queer-centric world. The Dodgers came off as only supporting a queer organization if it fit into their definition of appropriate and socially acceptable. In other words, it came off as telling LGBTQIA+ people what is appropriate and what should be celebrated.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
Created in 1979, the Sisters began fundraising for various causes in 1980s. This included one of the first fundraisers for an AIDS nonprofit. At the height of the AIDS epidemic in gay men, the Sisters created information on safer-sex. Focused on absurdity to make their point, at the 1986 San Fransisco Pride Parade they had a giant inflatable penis with a condom on it to promote safer-sex. Indeed, since their inception they have made points in flamboyant natures and provided support for the LGBTQIA+ community.
While some Sisters feel that this is a response to being discriminated and feeling abandon by the Catholic Church, for others it is a way to connect to Catholic spirituality. What being a part of the Sisters means to each member is individual but they provide queer supports in a queer manner. By dressing in Catholic drag, they are honoring both their queer heritage as well as their connection (or lack thereof) with Catholicism.
The reason I chose this organization to start off Pride month is two fold. One, they are in the news and I wanted to highlight the amazing work they do. Two, I want to highlight the queerness in this organization. Indeed, they should be honored due to the amazing work they do for the queer community. They provide support for those who need it, especially those who do not have the support of other communities. Importantly, this is a queer organization that revels in itβs queerness, and if you are going to support LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities, you need to do it on their terms.
Next week, we will look at some pre-Stonewall organizations that set the stage for the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement, for better and for worse. Happy Pride!