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Speaking of multicolored faces! With her aquiline nose, severe Kabuki makeup, and penchant for feathered headdresses, Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence commands attention whether she's emceeing Pride or observing a novice nun collect donations at the gates of Pink Saturday. Her group, which started out as a guerrilla theater troupe, has been pushing the envelope of acceptability for 36 years, to no small amount of controversy, even within the LGBT community.
"There were gay people who hated the Sisters for a very long time," Roma says.
If Glide's liberation theology is rooted in Scripture, and its dedication to tackling injustice and inequality leavened by the full-throated praise of its choir and jazz band, the Sisters have found a different way to combat social ills. Their promiscuous use of glitter makeup and wordplay has made them an instantly identifiable presence at bingo, at the Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary contests on Easter Sunday, and, until this year, running Pink Saturday.
In 2014, when Facebook was gunning hard for its "real names" policy, Sister Roma's online identity briefly switched to the borderline-anonymous "Michael Williams," a change that felt as jarring as the act of stripping the burqa off a devout Muslim woman. The policy changed back after a delegation of drag queens, Roma included, met with Facebook executives. (One imagines Mark Zuckerberg and his attorneys quivering before a majestic nun with angry eyebrows drawn in the middle of her forehead.) Now in her 28th year as a fully professed nun, Sister Roma was initially drawn to the order because she saw the profound effects such a small group of people could have on people's lives.
"In 1987, Sister Luscious Lashes introduced me to the group," Sister Roma says. "I learned that at the time there were just six active members who were passionate about civil rights and caring for the community. They were the first group to hold an AIDS fundraiser and produce a safe-sex pamphlet. They performed an exorcism in Union Square. I was blown away."
Since 1979, the one-time theater group evolved into a registered nonprofit that's been at the forefront of every issue from support of LGBT youth to the fight against breast cancer. The Sisters' San Francisco chapter, the largest in the world, has some 60 active members, and while today no LGBT-friendly politician would think of running for office in the city without at least a nod to the Sisters, it wasn't always that way.
"Dianne Feinstein did not like the Sisters. When Sister Boom Boom ran for Supervisor [in 1982, listing "Nun of the Above" under occupation], the poster was him as the Wicked Witch of the West flying over City Hall on a broom and the caption was, 'Surrender Dianne.'" Feinstein, then mayor and now California's senior senator, has since come around, even issuing proclamations honoring certain San Francisco drag queens for their years of service.
Although by no means a proper religion, the Sisters are not without ceremonial trappings modeled after pre-Vatican II Catholicism. Veilings, in which novice nuns become fully professed, may be public spectacles sometimes held on the Eagle Tavern's back patio. The group also performs "saintings," an honor which Sister Roma notes has been bestowed on Lily Tomlin, Harvey Milk (posthumously), many longtime HIV/AIDS volunteers, and Margaret Cho.
"Margaret sent a huge puppet to accept her award at Easter," Sister Roma says.
Pink Saturday may be gone, a victim of its own success in an era when thousands can message their friends to join a party without caring what the party is about, but Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary live on, and the Sisters are still veiling new nuns. Sister Agnes Dei'Afta Tamara, the current Mistress of Novices, explains the four-tiered structure as volunteers, postulants, novices, and fully professed nuns. A volunteer is merely someone who expresses interest. Postulants spend several months getting to know the order, and novices take an additional six months to shadow a nun, performing projects that prove their merit and get the rest of the chapter to vote for them.
Novices wear white veils, work volunteer shifts at the Eagle beer bust or various street fairs, cannot speak to the media on behalf of the order, and must be accompanied by a fully professed nun while in public. (Once fully professed, Sisters have the freedom essentially to do as they please.) Currently, Sister Agnes has six applicants in the first three stages, and is always looking to recruit more. She herself is new — having professed four years ago — and seconds Sister Roma's count of 60 active nuns, adding that there is some mystery to the total number.
"There are some sisters from the original group that I've never seen," Sister Agnes says.
If people are judged by their nemeses, the Sisters have particularly choice enemies. However, it's not necessarily the Catholic hierarchy that hates them. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone — no shrinking violet when it comes to opining on public policy — hasn't said much about them even after the nuns protested his installation in 2012. Typically, opposition comes from blowhards such as Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly or the Catholic League's William Donohue, who uses the Sisters' supposed heresy and moral turpitude as fundraising bullet points in a never-ending hate campaign.
For her part, Glide Memorial's Rev. Oliveto says of the Sisters, "They are amazing! I love them."
If there is one throughline for outsider churches, it is that the titles people hold can be quite magnificent. But beyond the pageantry, the commonality is simple. As Sister Roma succinctly puts it, "We know that there is more."
Undoubtedly, when one calls oneself a "spiritual person," it all too often translates as self-satisfied, content-deprived mush masquerading as a moral credo. But the nontraditional churches and Christian-rooted spiritual movements across San Francisco prove that it is possible to escape that morass of passive therapy-speak, and improve the world in measurable ways.
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