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Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
Since 1979
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), also called Order of Perpetual Indulgence (OPI), is a charitable, protest, and street performance movement that uses drag and religious imagery to satirize issues of sex, gender, and morality (particularly Christian perspectives on these topics) and fundraise for charity. In 1979, a small group of gay men in San Francisco began wearing the attire of Catholic nuns in visible situations using camp to promote various social and political causes in the Castro District.
From the original organization in San Francisco, the Sisters have grown throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, and South America, and are now an international network of autonomous orders.
Why it's on the map
The Sisters staged one of the earliest fundraisers for HIV/AIDS in June 1982, and continued to raise money through the 1980s for AIDS victims.
The letter was considered an attack on the LGBTQ community, with LGBTQ newspaper Bay Area Reporter mocking the letter with a headline "Pope to Gays: 'Drop Dead." Some critics claimed that the letter implied that the LGBTQ community itself is responsible for violence against it, and that homosexual people were responsible for the AIDS crisis.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence made their first appearance on Castro Street in San Francisco in 1979.
Their first protest as an official order was joining an anti-nuclear march in March 1980 with habits and pom poms and reciting their "Rosary in Time of Nuclear Peril".
Source: Wikipedia / Wikidata
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