Thousands of protestors gathered at the gates of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on June 16 amid backlashes from religious groups after the baseball team invited an anti-Catholic drag queen group to be honored at the venue for its annual LGBT “Pride Night.”
The protest, which was co-sponsored by nonprofits Catholic Vote and Catholics for Catholics, lasted for four hours until Friday evening, during the height of which organizers said up to 10,000 protestors showed up outside the gates. Many demonstrators wore red and carried signs or symbols of their faith, decrying the antics of the drag group as mocking of their religion and the work of real nuns.
“We wanted to send a message to the Dodgers and woke corporations that enough is enough,” Catholic Vote spokesperson Tommy Valentine told The Epoch Times. “If we stand up and stand together, we can show these woke corporations that they can’t get away with [mocking Catholics]. We’re not going to stop.”
A still image from video filmed by NTD of Catholic Vote spokesperson Tommy Valentine speaking during a protest against Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to honor an anti-Catholic drag queen group at its annual LGBT celebration at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on June 16, 2023. (NTD Television)The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—a self-described group of “queer and trans nuns”— is known for its controversial showcases, including its depiction of Christ’s crucifixion, where scantily-clad drag queens perform pole dance on the cross, along with other explicit sexually explicit content. The group first appeared publicly in San Francisco in 1979, according to its website.
Before its game against the San Francisco Giants, the Dodgers honored the drag group with a “Community Hero Award” and applauded its efforts to promote “human rights, diversity and spiritual enlightenment.”
Inside the stadium, the crowd of attendees was small when two members of the drag group received the award, according to Valentine and recent media coverage of the game. The ceremony reportedly took place hours before most of the fans made it to their seats for the game. Some in the small audience clapped, while some remained silent or booed, according to Fox News.
Following the event, Valentine said the protest was so successful that LA Dodgers executives agreed to meet with the Catholic advocacy group on an unspecified date, during which the group will “demand an apology.” The protest was largely peaceful, without reports of any disturbances or arrests.
Protesters hold signs at a Catholics for Catholics event in response to the Dodgers’ Pride Night event including the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, before the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on June 16, 2023. (Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)When the Dodgers first announced plans to honor the group, the team was met with vocal opposition from various Catholic groups and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who called the organization’s choice of garb an affront to ordained nuns, and its members’ overall behavior a lewd mockery of Christianity in general.
Under the pressure, the Dodgers on May 5 withdrew the group’s invitation, a move that prompted more criticism from local elected officials and LGBT advocacy groups, who said the entire message of the Pride movement is one of inclusion, and that banning the drag group was deemed an affront to that mission.
With many of the area’s most prominent LGBT organizations vowing to skip the Dodger Pride event, the team reversed course on May 22, apologizing to the group and again inviting its members to take part in Pride Night.
Days ahead of the game on Friday night, according to Valentine, Catholic Vote successfully fundraised to launch a million-dollar ad campaign on radio and television, titled “The Dodgers Have Lost Their Way,” which laments the team’s decision to honor a group that “mocks Catholic nuns with vile sexual perversions, pole dances on crosses, blessings with sex toys, even sexualizing the Virgin Mary and the words of Jesus Christ.”
A still image from video taken by NTD of thousands gathering at the gates of Dodger Stadium to protest against Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to honor an anti-Catholic drag queen group at its annual LGBT celebration at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on June 16, 2023. (NTD Television)“A fringe group like this honored, awarded, celebrated? There is no equality in mocking women religious. No tolerance in hate, no pride in anti-Catholic bigotry. Mocking Christians is not the Dodger way,” the ad concludes.
Valentine told NTD Television during the protest outside the stadium on June 16 the protesters were there to pray and “show love.”
“We don’t hate the men who pose as fake nuns. We don’t hate anybody in there,” he said. “We want them to see what they are doing is offensive. It’s sacrilegious. It’s blasphemous. And we can’t let it stand without saying something about it.”
The Dodgers have not responded to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment by press time.
Luuk Algra and Julian Gonzalez of NTD Television and City News Service contributed to this report.
