CV NEWS FEED // Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, sent a letter Monday to Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Rob Manfred, confronting him over the LA Dodgers’ decision to honor a group of pro-LGBTQ activist drag performers who mock the Catholic faith.
“Do you believe that the Los Angeles Dodgers are being ‘inclusive and welcoming to everyone’ by giving an award to a group of gay and transgender drag performers that intentionally mocks and degrades Christians—and not only Christians, but nuns, who devote their lives to serving others?” Rubio wrote to Manfred.
The letter came the Monday after CatholicVote on Friday reported that the Dodgers plan to honor to The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence during “Pride” month (June).
“On Friday, June 16, the Dodgers will partner with LA Pride to host a 10th annual LGBTQ night at Dodgers Stadium before a matchup with the San Francisco Giants,” CatholicVote reported:
At the pre-game event, a “Community Hero Award” will be presented to the LA Chapter of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The men dress in grotesque costumes styled after the garb of Catholic nuns and mock the faith with the motto “Go forth and sin some more!”
“Recently, you stated that Major League Baseball needs to ‘make decisions that are as inclusive and welcoming to everyone as possible, and keep us as apolitical as possible,’” Rubio wrote in his letter to the commissioner. “I write to ask whether your League wants to be “inclusive and welcoming” to Christians, and if so, why you are allowing an MLB team to honor a group that mocks Christians through diabolical parodies of our faith.”
The “Sisters” is a group that has “mocked and degraded Christians, and especially Catholics, since its founding on Easter Sunday in 1979,” Rubio continued:
The “sisters” are men who dress in lewd imitation of Roman Catholic nuns. The group’s motto, “go and sin some more,” is a perversion of Jesus’s command to “go, and sin no more.” The group’s “Easter” ceremony features children’s programming followed by a drag show where adult performers dress in blasphemous imitation of Jesus and Mary. The group hosts pub crawls mocking the Stations of the Cross and even the Eucharist, the sacrament that unites more than one billion Catholics around the world.
While Dodgers Vice President of Marketing Erik Braverman has said that the team’s so-called “Pride Night” is meant to “foster an atmosphere of acceptance for all,” Rubio wrote, “Los Angeles’s many Catholics surely find that claim outrageous….”
Rubio wrote that his letter was intended “to clear up any confusion about where the League stands on this matter,” and asked Commissioner Manfredt a series of pointed questions:
Do you believe that the Los Angeles Dodgers are being “inclusive and welcoming to everyone” by giving an award to a group of gay and transgender drag performers that intentionally mocks and degrades Christians—and not only Christians, but nuns, who devote their lives to serving others? Do you believe such an award is “apolitical”? Do you believe it is a sound business decision, in a city with more than four million Catholics and countless other people of faith? Finally, setting aside financial considerations, do you believe it is morally right for the most important league of our national pastime to honor a group that mocks religion, and one religion in particular?
“Major League Baseball, as a private organization in a free country, can give awards to whatever groups it chooses, no matter how loathsome,” Rubio concluded:
But baseball has always been tied to our nation’s values, at the heart of which is faith in God. It would be an outrage and a tragedy if the MLB, in pursuit of modern, secular, and indeed anti-religious “values,” rebuked that faith and the millions of believing fans who cherish the sport.
Sen. Marco Rubio is himself a Catholic.
