The Los Angeles Dodgers’ apology letter re-inviting the anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night reads like the unwinding of a grueling struggle session. And it ends in a predictably pitiful way, with the reactionaries promising “to better educate” themselves in the future.
In contemporary parlance, to “educate” oneself means allowing intellectually and morally stunted clowns — literally, in this case — to bully you. Because LGBT activists, like BLM activists, never need to be “educated” about anything. They have achieved enlightenment.
No, it’s the slack-jawed yokels who cling to thousands of years of intellectual and theological tradition who need lessons from the geniuses who spend Easter Sunday dressed in Virgin Mary drag, passing out condoms on a 13-stop bar crawl mocking the Stations of the Cross. The Dodgers are merely celebrating diversity by sponsoring a group that simulates sex scenes on crucifixes. Why are you fanatics starting another culture war?
The Dodgers had initially failed to educate themselves about “the lifesaving work” the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence “have done tirelessly for decades.” I mean, it’s not as if Catholics are out there spending tens of billions on charity every year, funding hospitals, adoption agencies, and a slew of other causes. They should probably hit up the drag queen nuns for some advice. What do the real ones know about charity?
Really, though, the Dodgers’ decision to include the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in their Pride Night also makes perfect sense. Far from being transgressive or shocking, they represent the state religion far better than any other order.
These days, a California teacher might be fired for informing parents that their child has decided to change genders, or she might be let go for failing to adhere to a confused kid’s demands that she use incorrect pronouns. But the state is also trying to force churches to fund abortions and trying to force religious health care workers to perform “gender surgeries” and then trying to deny any workers or hospitals their conscience rights if they refuse.
In California, disability funding offered to students in a private secular institution — typically teeming with wealthy kids who’ve escaped the state’s disastrous public school systems — is denied the religious Jew, Muslim, and Christian. Catholic schools that offer scholarships to poor kids and then teach about modesty or good works are barred from aid. Yet, if the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” opened their own school with a curriculum stressing queerness, they would almost certainly be beneficiaries.
Now, before anyone emails this non-believer an incoherent rant about the “separation of church and state,” know that there is nothing unconstitutional about religious institutions getting tax dollars. There never has been. Just last year, the Supreme Court held that state programs providing money for public school tuition could not exclude schools offering religious instruction.
Gavin Newsom, canonized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, likes to lie about Florida barring teachers from saying the word “gay” and “banning” books (because to deny a second grader an instruction manual on oral sex is to deny them democracy itself. Educate yourself, troglodyte!) But, by any genuine standard, California is more authoritarian than Florida; it is a place deeply antagonistic to religious Americans.
