Back in 1976, when a couple of nuns loaned habits to a couple of nice gentlemen in Iowa who were performing in the musical The Sound of Music, it is unlikely they considered the act to be the birth of what would become an international culture-jamming queer protest movement. Three years later, those same men dressed in their nun garb and wandered around some of San Francisco’s nude beaches, turning heads with the unlikely combination of nuns smoking cigars and carrying machine guns. After capturing the attention of the media and the public during a few more appearances at sporting events, the Sisterhood of Perpetual Indulgence was formed and immediately started recruiting new members. Their first fundraiser was held in 1980, raising money for gay Cuban refugees. By 1982, their activism had started focusing on the troubling and worrisome ‘gay cancer’ that would become known as AIDS; the Sisterhood distributed information to the gay community and started fundraising to raise funds to fight the disease. Thirty years later, the Sisterhood’s brand of carnivalesque resistance continues to inspire performance art protest, art installations and community activism internationally. With more than twenty “convents” established throughout the USA, Scotland, Colombia, Uraguay, Australia, Germany, the UK and Switzerland, the movement has become a formidable force for AIDS fundraising and awareness. They offer grants to other organizations doing activist work, and continue to charm and enlighten crowds with their irreverence and wit.
You can pray your soul silly by visiting the Sisters here
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