Known for her dramatic facial makeup and colored boa headdresses, as well as her work caring for AIDS patients, promoting safe sex and cleaning up trash throughout San Francisco, drag activist Sister Roma will be honored Monday at an annual LGBTQ+ Pride Month ceremony at the Capitol.

But what is normally a routine event in the Democratic-dominated statehouse, where more LGBTQ+ legislators now serve than at any time in the state’s history, has become a flashpoint in the culture wars as Republicans oppose the acceptance of transgender identities and honor for a group of service drag queens who see them as mockeries of the Catholic religion.

“The Sisters of Perpetual Indulggence, through their public contempt for the Catholic faith, have shown contempt for the principles of tolerance and understanding that should guide our society. To honor them in the Senate chambers would be inappropriate and contrary to the values ​​we hold You’re stuck,” GOP state senators wrote in a letter last week asking Senate Majority Leader Toni Atkins to rescind Roma’s invitation to be honored in the chamber.

Atkins, a San Diego Democrat who is the first LGBTQ+ person to lead the Senate, rejected their requestsay

in a letter of reply to the GOP caucus

that while Catholic and religious organizations have every right to be disappointed with the nomination, it also believes that “faith is ultimately stronger than any parody.”

The controversy follows a similar outburst in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers said weeks ago they would recognize the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with an award for community heroes, then withdrew the award amid criticism from Catholics, and finally reinstated with the promise to “provide better education”. ourselves” and strengthen ties with the LGBTQ+ community.

The queer service group is one of California’s oldest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and has since expanded around the world. Members take a vow to serve their communities through ministry, education, safe sex campaigns, entertainment, and human rights advocates. In the 1980s, that mission included fighting the AIDS epidemic and taking in those who had been ostracized from society and left alone to suffer and die.

Sister Roma recalls a time when the stigma against AIDS was so great that few were willing to approach, let alone touch, their own friends and family who were HIV positive.

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“The sisters went looking for these people, who were often hunched over a cocktail in a dark bar, and we just sat down and talked to them,” said Roma.

in an interview with The Times. “At the end of that conversation, those people often asked for a hug, and the sisters always said yes.”

Then Roma knew she had found the calling of her life.

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Since joining the Order in 1987, Roma has become one of the most recognizable sisters in San Francisco.

sporty attire

black and silver eyebrows, white makeup and a rotating cast of colored boa headdresses as she helps out

the city she’s called home since she arrived in 1985 from Grand Rapids, Michigan. She led an anti-violence campaign, fought Facebook to win the right to use chosen names on the platform, and promoted mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

State Senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and member of the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said he nominated Roma because she is “one of the absolute best, most effective and most respected community leaders in San Francisco.”

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Wiener said the Republican pushback reflects a misunderstanding of the sisters’ work.

“The Catholic organizations that demonize the sisters and say they are somehow hateful or anti-Catholic are dead wrong,” Wiener said.

While Republicans have spoken out nationally against transgender rights and identities, such culture war issues are rare in the California State Senate, where the GOP has only one

fifth

of the seats and the institutional culture tends towards politeness. The letter rebuking Roma’s appearance at the Capitol is one of the most significant expressions of division in the upper chamber in recent years.

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Evangelical and Catholic organizations organized a prayer vigil outside the Capitol while the legislature is in session.

“It is disheartening to see the California legislature honor a group characterized by its derision of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular,” California Family Council President Jonathan Keller said in a statement. declaration. “By promoting the profane ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,’ these elected leaders are endorsing ridicule, hatred and profanity. This ceremony deeply offends millions of Californians in the Golden State.

Roma rejected the idea that she or any of the sisters were mocking Catholicism or other faith groups.

“We literally serve our community. We spread joy, we feed the hungry, we provide supplies and care to the displaced community, we serve the sick, we support the youth,” she said.

“My existence is not an attack on your faith. The problem is that some people use their faith as an attack on my existence,” Roma added. “Giving me equal rights doesn’t take away your rights. And your religious beliefs don’t give you the right to discriminate against me.”