JT Santana | jtwb768
Vice President JD Vance used a Kansas campaign rally to describe the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as a “devil worshiping group” and an “anti-Christian hate group.” He misnamed them as “Our Ladies of Perpetual Indulgence,” tied them to a supposed pregame blessing at Dodger Stadium, and used Kansas City PrideFest sponsorship to suggest a direct connection between the Sisters and the church founded by Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton. The available record does not support several of those claims. The speech transcript captures Vance’s wording in full, which makes the factual dispute unusually easy to examine.
This is not a dispute over whether anyone must like the Sisters. Their use of Catholic imagery, drag, camp, sexual humor, parody, and religious satire has drawn criticism for decades, including objections from Catholic leaders who view some performances as offensive or sacrilegious. People are free to hold those views, and religious criticism deserves to be represented accurately. Yet a charge of religious offense is not interchangeable with a factual allegation that an organization worships the devil, exists to spread anti-Christian hatred, or performed blessings for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The difference is evidence. A public official can condemn satire, argue theology, criticize Pride events, or object to drag. Those are positions and opinions. Once the claim becomes “this group worships the devil,” “this group blessed Dodgers games,” or “this church directly supported this organization,” the claim can be checked against records, event descriptions, organizational statements, historical archives, and independent reporting. In this case, that record cuts sharply against the caricature presented from the stage.
The Sisters do not need a politician’s approval to have their history described accurately. They do not need to become conventional, polite, or easy to explain before the facts about them count. Their history contains provocation and parody, yet it contains decades of fundraising, health education, community service, queer ministry, HIV/AIDS work, and public advocacy. Those facts remain facts regardless of anyone’s reaction to the white makeup, veils, camp names, or religious imagery.
Sister Roma did not let the attack stand unanswered
Out reported on September 16 that longtime Sister of Perpetual Indulgence Sister Roma responded directly to Vance’s remarks. Roma rejected his characterization of the organization and described the Sisters as a global human-rights fundraising network engaged in service to hungry people, unhoused people, and marginalized communities. Her sharpest response fit into eight words: “We do not mock nuns, we are nuns.”
That sentence is more than a slogan. The Sisters describe themselves as an all-volunteer order of queer and trans nuns whose mission centers on community service, ministry, outreach, human rights, respect for diversity, spiritual work, humor, and resistance to shame and bigotry. The San Francisco organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, and its public materials describe grants, community events, safety campaigns, fundraising, and direct outreach. One can dispute the Sisters’ definition of nunhood or reject their theology. One cannot fairly describe their stated identity without acknowledging that they understand the role as ministry and service rather than a costume worn only for mockery.
Roma’s response is valuable for another reason: she redirected attention from rhetoric to conduct. The organization’s record can be examined through decades of press coverage, archival material, local chapter histories, public-health publications, and its own records. That evidence documents queer political theater, irreverent performances, and criticism of religious institutions, but it documents service work just as clearly. The Sisters are not a blank screen onto which anyone can project whatever accusation creates the loudest reaction.
The phrase “anti-Christian hate group” carries a heavy factual implication. Vance said the Sisters’ “whole purpose” was to mock Christianity, according to the transcript. Yet the Sisters’ published mission identifies community service, ministry, outreach, human rights, diversity, spiritual enlightenment, humor, and opposition to bigotry and guilt as core purposes. Critics can argue that some conduct conflicts with that mission, but saying mockery is the organization’s entire purpose does not match its stated mission or its documented service history.
Roma’s response changes the frame of the dispute
The new reporting from Out adds something the first version of this piece needed: the Sisters speaking for themselves. Roma is not a detached commentator describing the organization from a distance. She is a longtime member who has spent decades representing the San Francisco order in public, and her response places the dispute back on the organization’s actual work rather than on a campaign-stage description of it. Out’s headline captures the center of her reply: the Sisters reject the premise that their identity is reducible to mockery.
Roma’s response is forceful without pretending that the Sisters are conventional religious figures. She identifies them as a global human-rights fundraising organization, points to service for hungry and unhoused people, and cites the order’s history with marginalized communities. She then ties that service to the vows and language the Sisters have used for decades. The point is not that every Christian must recognize those vows as religiously valid. The point is that the Sisters’ own identity, mission, and record are far more substantial than the label “devil worshiping group.”
That distinction should remain visible in any fair account. Outsiders can dispute whether queer drag nuns qualify as nuns in a theological sense, and churches can define religious orders according to their own doctrines. Roma is making a statement about the Sisters’ identity and vocation, not claiming recognition from the Roman Catholic Church. Her words explain how the order sees itself, and that perspective belongs in the story whenever a public official characterizes the group’s purpose.
Her response exposes another weakness in reducing the Sisters to an insult aimed at Christians. An organization can use religious parody and still view its work as ministry. It can offend some believers and still serve people in need. It can confront church institutions and still adopt ritual, vows, service, and spiritual language as part of its own identity. Those tensions are real, and they are more intellectually serious than the claim that the group can be summed up as satanic.
That is why the phrase “We do not mock nuns, we are nuns” carries so much weight in this dispute. It does not settle the theological argument, nor does it ask critics to accept the Sisters’ self-definition as their own. It forces the discussion back to the question Vance’s characterization skipped: who are these people according to their own mission, history, and conduct? Once that question is asked, the simplistic portrait becomes much harder to sustain.
The AIDS history cannot be erased by a campaign sound bite
Any serious account of the Sisters has to deal with their place in early HIV/AIDS and safer-sex education. In 1982, registered nurses associated with the order worked with other Sisters and medical professionals on Play Fair!, an illustrated safer-sex pamphlet that used humor, direct language, and practical health information. Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage describes AIDS care and education as central parts of the Sisters’ work during the crisis, and a contemporary July 1982 issue of The Sentinel reported that the Sisters were distributing the pamphlet on sexually transmitted diseases in San Francisco.
The timing is significant. The public-health response to AIDS was still developing, fear and stigma were severe, and gay communities were trying to share lifesaving information under conditions of immense uncertainty. An oral history preserved by the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art discusses Play Fair! as an especially early example of safer-sex information created and circulated by the gay community. The Sisters used humor in a setting where shame often dominated public discussion of sex, disease, and queer life.
That history deserves precision. It would be too broad to credit a single organization with inventing safer-sex education, since activists, physicians, nurses, community groups, and people living with AIDS contributed to that work in several cities. It is accurate, though, to describe the Sisters as early participants and pioneers in sex-positive safer-sex education during the first years of the AIDS crisis. Their own chapter histories identify registered nurses Sister Florence Nightmare and Sister Roz Erection as central figures in producing Play Fair! with medical professionals in 1982.
That is the history sitting behind Roma’s response. When she points to the Sisters’ early HIV/AIDS education and prevention work, she is not inventing a heroic backstory after the fact. Archival evidence from the period documents it. Any description of the Sisters that reduces them to religious mockery discards a large and independently documented part of what they were doing when queer communities faced a lethal public-health emergency.
There is an uncomfortable historical irony here. The same visual style that critics cite as proof of frivolity or contempt helped the Sisters attract attention to sexual-health information at a moment when getting people to read that information had real stakes. The Sentinel quoted a Sister joking about the pamphlet’s rudeness and tastelessness, then observed that people were actually taking and keeping the material. The humor was not separate from the public-health strategy; it was part of the method used to reach an audience.
The Dodgers story is not what Vance described
Vance said the Sisters were “saying special blessings before LA Dodgers games.” Major League Baseball’s own account of the June 16, 2023 Pride Night tells a different story. The Los Angeles chapter received a Community Hero Award for community work, ministry, outreach, human rights, respect for diversity, and spiritual work, and the presentation occurred roughly an hour before first pitch. MLB’s account does not describe a blessing of the game, the team, the players, or the stadium.
The 2023 controversy was public and heavily covered. The Dodgers first removed the Sisters from the event after objections from conservative Catholic organizations, then reversed that decision and restored the invitation. The award presentation took place before the game as a recognition ceremony. Reporting from the Los Angeles Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and MLB consistently describes an award presentation, not a pregame religious blessing.
The distinction is plain. Saying a group received a Community Hero Award is not the same as saying it was invited to bless a baseball game. The actual event can be documented through photographs, contemporaneous news coverage, the Dodgers’ own statements, and MLB reporting. The ceremony generated major controversy, so there is no shortage of evidence describing what occurred.
There is room for disagreement over whether the Dodgers should have honored the Sisters. Catholic critics protested the decision and said the Sisters’ performances demean sacred symbols. Supporters cited the organization’s charitable and LGBTQ+ service record. That dispute was real, but the existence of a controversy does not transform an award presentation into a blessing ceremony.
“Devil worshiping” is not supported by the record
The phrase “devil worshiping” is the easiest claim to test and the hardest to substantiate. The Sisters’ mission materials do not describe Satanic worship, Satanism, devil worship, or devotion to the devil. Their public identity centers on queer and trans nunhood, community service, spiritual expression, humor, fundraising, advocacy, and resistance to shame. Independent accounts describe them as a charity, protest, performance, or satirical religious group, depending on the source.
Calling a religious parody blasphemous is an opinion rooted in theology. Calling it devil worship is a factual assertion about belief or practice. Evidence would be needed to support it, and I found no credible source showing that the Sisters worship Satan or identify devil worship as part of their mission. Current reporting from Out, PinkNews, and LGBTQ Nation likewise describes Vance’s satanic characterization as false or unsupported.
Criticism of the Sisters should not be erased in a defense of them. Catholic leaders and lay organizations have accused the group of ridiculing nuns, the Eucharist, Jesus, and other elements of Catholic faith. The 2023 Dodgers dispute brought those objections into national view, and thousands protested outside the stadium. A fact-based defense can acknowledge those objections without accepting a separate unsupported claim about devil worship.
That distinction protects everyone involved in the debate. Religious people deserve to have their objections represented accurately. Queer activists deserve the same treatment. Accuracy means reporting criticism as criticism, documented conduct as documented conduct, and unsupported claims as unsupported claims.
PrideFest sponsorship does not prove a direct organizational relationship
Vance’s remarks tied the Sisters to Adam Hamilton through Resurrection’s sponsorship of Kansas City PrideFest. Resurrection itself confirms that it sponsored KC PrideFest 2026 and sent volunteers from its Community Justice and QIC Ministries. KC Pride materials list Resurrection among vendors and community participants, and the church promoted participation in the Pride parade.
What the available evidence does not establish is a direct donation from Hamilton or Resurrection to the Sisters, a formal endorsement of the Sisters by Hamilton, or a direct financial partnership between the church and the Sisters. Vance’s transcript moves from PrideFest sponsorship to the assertion that Hamilton “proudly supported” the Sisters. Reporting from Out says the Sisters were among the groups Vance invoked in attacking Hamilton, but the direct organizational link is not shown in the sources reviewed here.
That point is important on its own terms. Large festivals can have scores or hundreds of sponsors, vendors, performers, nonprofit organizations, religious groups, businesses, and community booths. Sponsoring an event can indicate support for the event’s broad purpose without proving a direct relationship with every participant. Treating event sponsorship as evidence of direct support for every group present stretches the evidence past what it establishes.
The factual correction does not require defending Hamilton’s candidacy or criticizing Marshall’s. It requires keeping separate questions separate. Resurrection sponsored PrideFest; that is documented. A direct Hamilton-to-Sisters funding or endorsement relationship has not been established by the material reviewed here.
Offense is real. So is the difference between offense and factual distortion.
Some Christians sincerely see the Sisters’ use of habits, crucifixes, sainthood imagery, and church language as insulting. Those reactions are not imaginary, and defenders of the Sisters gain nothing by pretending every criticism is fabricated. The organization has spent decades using provocation on purpose, and controversy is built into much of its public performance.
Yet offense does not create new facts. A person can be deeply offended by a parody and still describe it accurately. A person can condemn a performance as sacrilegious without inventing a religious affiliation that the performers do not claim. A person can oppose a baseball team honoring the Sisters without rewriting the ceremony into an event that did not occur.
That is where Sister Roma’s response lands with force. She did not ask critics to abandon their faith or praise every Sister performance. She rejected a characterization of the order that, in her account, bore little resemblance to its service, fundraising, outreach, and ministry. Her statement directed attention to hungry people, unhoused people, marginalized people, and the order’s HIV/AIDS history, then stated the identity claim at the center of the dispute: “We do not mock nuns, we are nuns.”
People are free to reject that self-description. Roman Catholic canon law does not recognize the Sisters as a Catholic religious order, and the Sisters do not claim to be one. Their use of “nun” is part spiritual vocation, part queer tradition, part public performance, and part community-service identity. Describing that accurately is possible without demanding agreement with it.
The Sisters’ record is bigger than the caricature
The easiest version of this story is a culture-war shouting match: queer drag nuns on one side, religious conservatives on the other, each reduced to a symbol. That framing misses the history. The Sisters emerged in San Francisco in 1979, developed into an international network, staged provocative public actions, raised funds, distributed health information, participated in AIDS care, and built a long-running form of queer ministry around humor, visibility, and service.
Their record is not spotless by definition, nor does charitable work immunize any organization from criticism. A serious defense does not need sainthood. It needs factual proportion. When an organization has nearly five decades of documented activity, describing its “whole purpose” as hatred or mockery demands evidence strong enough to account for the rest of that history.
The Sisters have been intentionally abrasive at times. They have used religious symbols in ways many Christians consider profane. They have staged events meant to provoke, mock social hypocrisy, and confront sexual shame. Those facts can sit beside the documented record of grants, health education, meals, outreach, fundraising, and support for marginalized people. Human organizations can contain tension, contradiction, humor, offense, service, and political protest at the same time.
A caricature strips all of that away. It turns a complicated institution into a villain simple enough to fit inside a campaign line. The result may be rhetorically efficient, but it is historically thin and factually misleading.
Call the falsehoods what the evidence supports
There is a difference between calling a statement false and calling it a lie. “Lie” asserts knowledge and intent: the speaker knew a statement was false and said it anyway. The public evidence reviewed here establishes several false or misleading claims, but it does not establish Vance’s private state of mind. Precision requires stopping at what can be proved.
What can be proved is substantial. He got the Sisters’ name wrong. His description of them as devil worshipers is unsupported by their mission, history, or credible reporting. His description of the Dodgers episode as special blessings before games conflicts with MLB’s account of a Community Hero Award ceremony. His attempt to turn Resurrection’s PrideFest sponsorship into direct support for the Sisters goes farther than the evidence reviewed here can sustain.
None of those corrections requires anyone to like the Sisters. None requires agreement with their theology, drag, sexual politics, or satire. None requires support for Adam Hamilton, Roger Marshall, JD Vance, or any political party. It requires a narrower standard that should be uncontroversial: public claims about identifiable people and organizations should match the record.
The record is enough
The strongest defense of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is not sentimental. It is documentary. Their critics can point to provocative performances and offensive religious parody; their defenders can point to service, ministry, fundraising, AIDS education, safer-sex outreach, grants, and community care. Both sets of facts belong in an accurate account.
What does not belong is invented theology. What does not belong is turning a documented baseball award into a fictional blessing ceremony. What does not belong is converting sponsorship of a large Pride festival into proof of a direct financial or organizational relationship that has not been shown.
Sister Roma’s answer works precisely for that reason. She did not need to sanitize the Sisters or make them palatable to people who dislike them. She put their identity and service record back into the story, where it had been pushed out by a campaign-stage caricature. Her response was direct, and the historical record gives it weight.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have spent nearly half a century refusing shame, using camp as social criticism, raising money, caring for people at society’s margins, and making themselves impossible to ignore. Critics may call that irreverent, offensive, theatrical, political, or sacrilegious. Those are arguments people can have in public.
But facts are not costumes. They do not change when a crowd reacts, when a microphone is turned on, or when an accusation is politically useful. If anyone wants to attack the Sisters, the starting point should be what they have actually done, what they actually say, and what the evidence can actually prove.
