The Drag Nuns Who Saved Lives When the Church Stayed Silent

In 1979, a group of queer activists in San Francisco put on nun habits as an Easter joke. Within a few years, they were saving lives.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence started as camp and irreverence, but when the AIDS crisis arrived and official institutions looked the other way, these drag nuns stepped up. They published "Play Fair," one of the very first safer-sex guides in the country, at a time when the government was silent and the church was hostile. They raised money, cared for the sick, and used humor and visibility to fight back against shame and stigma.

This episode tells the story of how joy became a form of resistance, and how a group of people in face paint and habits became genuine lifesavers. Today, more than 600 Sisters operate in chapters around the world, still using camp and community to fight for queer rights.

When religion abandoned so many of us, the Sisters created their own. This is the story of drag nuns, sacred rebellion, and love as a radical act.

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Transcript

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Who in the hell are these nuns and what are they all about? Hi there, I'm Chris with a K and welcome back to this week in Queer History, where we find hope-filled, inspirational, and strategic moments from Queer History that we can use today. This week we're going to San Francisco Easter Sunday 1979 when three men put on nuns' habits and accidentally launched a global movement built on joy, service, and the most fabulous names you've ever heard. This is the story of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Picture the Castro District, Spring 1979. The neighborhood is wall to wall with Castro clones, guys who are in tight jeans, muscle shirts, and mustaches.

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Oop.

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Homogeneous homosexuals. And then on Easter Sunday, April 14th, three men walked down the street in full nuns habits. Ken Bunch, Fred Brungaard, and Baruch Golden. Now Bunch and Brunegard weren't strangers to spectacle. They'd been co-chairs of the Gay Liberation Front at the University of Iowa and had formed a drag troupe called the Sugar Plum Fairies. And when they moved to San Francisco, the habits were the only costumes the Bunch still had. So they threw them on, walked out the door, and witnesses said it was like someone had lit a stick of dynamite. People stopped, they stared, they cheered. And in a neighborhood that had settled into a kind of comfortable sameness, three guys in none drag cracked everything wide open. But here's the most amazing thing. It didn't stay as a joke. By March 1980, the sisters had their first official event, an anti-nuclear march where they recited a rosary in time of nuclear peril. By October of that year, they'd held their first fundraiser, a bingo and a disco night that raised $1,500 for a gay Cuban refugee program. And by 1981, the San Francisco Examiner was calling them ubiquitous. In two years, they'd gone from a spontaneous Easter stroll to a recognizable institution. Their mission? To promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt. I mean, that is a mission. But then AIDS hit, and the sisters did something extraordinary. One of their members was a public health nurse named Bobby Campbell, Sister Florence Nightmare. RM Bobby was the 16th person in San Francisco diagnosed with Kaposi sarcoma. And instead of hiding, he put photographs of his own lesions in the window of Star Pharmacy on Castro Street. And this created what became San Francisco's first AIDS awareness poster. He called himself the AIDS Poster Boy. And on August 8th, 1983, Bobby appeared on the cover of Newsweek with his partner Bobby Hilliard. He co-authored the Denver Principles, the foundational document of the AIDS self-empowerment movement. Bobby Campbell died on August 15th, 1984. He was 32 years old. But before he died, Bobby and fellow sister Roz Erection, real name Baruch Golden, yes, remember him, one of the first three? They created something that saved lives. On June 27, 1982, at Gay Freedom Day, they distributed 16,000 free copies of a pamphlet called Play Fair. It was the first safer sex guide to use plain language, humor, and a sex-positive approach. And this was at a time when the government wasn't saying anything at all. And because the sisters are so genius, they listed guilt as a sexually transmitted infection. Symptoms, feeling bad or low self-esteem. Cure, respect, and love yourself. This life-saving pamphlet ended with Mother Superior wants all sisters to report for guilt disposal duty on the double. This was history making, and this was 1982. So while politicians looked away and preachers said AIDS was God's punishment, a group of queer people in whiteface makeup and sequent habits were doing the actual work of public health. They were doing it with compassion and clarity, and they did it with humor that made people listen instead of shut down. Scholar Melissa Wilcox calls what the sisters do serious parody, using irreverence not to mock faith, but to reclaim it. And the sisters kept showing up year after year. Sister Boom Boom ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1982 and got over 23,000 votes. So many that the city passed what became known as the Sister Boom Boom Law, requiring candidates to use their legal names on the ballot. On July 13th, 1984, Sister Boom Boom performed an exorcism of Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafley at Union Square in front of 2,000 people. Camp? 100%. Cathartic without a doubt. Two weeks after the Loma Prieta earthquake in October 1989, the sisters were out on Halloween collecting thousands of dollars for earthquake relief. Another side note, as their members died of the epidemic, they became nuns of the above, and their names were preserved in the ever-growing AIDS Memorial quilt. And something really fun to look at is the naming of the nuns. It's its own art form. When you become a sister, you craft a name that carries meaning, humor, and political edge. Sister Vicious Power Hungry B. Sister Missionary Position. Sister Hysterectoria Agnes. Each name is a pun, it's a manifesto, and it's definitely a conversation starter, wrapped all up into one. As Sister Phyllis Stein put it, we're not dressed as girls, we're dressed as nuns. We definitely minister to the spiritual needs of our community. And the nun community has grown. Today there are roughly 600 members across more than 60 houses worldwide. In the United States, Canada, Australia, Colombia, France, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, the UK, and Uruguay. Each house is autonomous. There's no central authority, no pope, just shared values and a commitment to joy and resistance. And the sisters now include trans women, trans men, non-binary people, cisgender women, people of every race and background. They host the legendary Hunky Jesus contest every Easter in San Francisco. And past winners include a Beyonce-inspired cowboy Jesus riding a fiberglass bison and a disco Jesus on roller skates. And speaking of people who show up for each other, I want to take a moment to thank our channel members. Your support keeps this history alive and accessible, and I am so grateful for every single one of you. If you want to join them and add your support, click the link up above or down in the description below. Thank you so much. Oh, and these sisters' power to revoke has not faded one bit over the years. In 2023, the Los Angeles Dodgers invited the Sisters for a Community Hero Award. Senator Marco Rubio wrote a protest letter. And on May 17th, the Dodgers caved and uninvited them. But then the LGBTQ organizations pulled all of their support from the event. Five days later, on May 22nd, the Dodgers re-invited the Sisters and apologized. On June 16th, the Sisters were honored at Dodgers Stadium to a standing ovation, while outside, some really sad, so sad protesters gathered. 44 years after that first Easter walk, the sisters still lit a stick of dynamite just by showing up. As Sister Unity put it, we were put at the spear point of the movement and allowed to represent what is queer, which was different and wonderful. And I want to get personal for a second because the sisters of perpetual indulgence, they mean something really important to me. I remember seeing them at my first pride parades and festivals, and they were these larger than life figures and whiteface and glitter, and I could just feel that energy coming from them. They are iconic, queer culture. And I have been lucky enough to have some real life interactions with them, with the individual sisters, and it changed how I see them. My husband and I and some friends, we ran into Sister Roma at a Toddrick Hall show, and she was the sweetest, most powerful, brave, and bold person, just full of light and confidence. And that's the thing I feel every single time that I run into a sister. There's a confidence and a determination and a clarity of vision that just radiates from them. Yes, it is camp, but it's another level of camp. It's like, look at me, and I am not backing down. So it's it's just so bold and so brave. And Sister Unity in LA, I've run into Sister Unity so many times on the streets of West Hollywood at festivals and events, or just a regular night where they're raising money. And every time there's this air of true human kindness and compassion, and they're always out doing good, raising money, always helping people. And you look at their bold makeup and their vivid habits, and you may think, you know, they're trying to create distance or separate themselves from us, but they are the most human and the most kind people I have ever met. They have a vision and a purpose, and I could not be prouder to have them in our rainbow family. When religion lost me because of my sexuality, because of being gay, because of being different, and the religion telling me that I couldn't be my authentic self, that I had to hide who I was, I lost something too. I lost community, I lost ritual, that feeling of a group of people they're standing up for you. But the sisters, the sisters, they fill that space. Their imagery, their service, their fierce and joyful community. That's a type of religion and a belief system that I can value. They are, in the truest sense, saints and angels for the people that traditional religion has left behind. And learning about their history made me respect them even more. Knowing that they stepped up in the 1980s when the epidemic was devastating our community, that they talk about sex and safety with boldness and clarity when no one else would, that they stood up for marginalized people with zero fear. It changed how I see them. There's such joy in what they do, and there is no fear. And I think that's that's the lesson. Joy without fear, service without judgment, community without conditions. I want to hear from you. Have you ever met the sisters in person? Drop your story in the comments. I would love to hear them. And if you want more queer history, click this video popping up right over here. And you can also join the circle community using the link up above or down in the description below. And we keep these conversations going, we share more history, we ask questions, and we build connection. Until next time, stay strong, stay bold, and keep making history.