LGBTQ+ Pleasure Night time at Dodger Stadium is returning this week, seemingly with out all of the controversy surrounding final 12 months’s occasion.
This 12 months’s festivities will happen earlier than and through the Dodgers’ sport towards the Kansas Metropolis Royals on Friday evening. Followers who buy a Pleasure Night time ticket pack will obtain an LGBTQ+-themed Dodgers jersey.
Pregame actions will embody a dwell DJ, line dancing classes and a vogue-off dance contest within the middle area plaza and an Outloud Sports activities kickball sport on the sector.
Actions of a special kind accompanied final 12 months’s Pleasure occasion at Dodger Stadium.
A few hours earlier than the June 16 sport towards the San Francisco Giants, roughly 2,000 demonstrators marched alongside Stadium Strategy to Vin Scully Avenue. The protest was in response to the Dodgers’ plan to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — a satirical efficiency and activist group made up of queer nuns in drag who’re thought of blasphemous by some Christians — with the crew’s Group Hero Award as a part of the Pleasure Night time actions.
The Dodgers confirmed to The Occasions that no Group Hero Award will likely be given out this 12 months.
A consultant for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence informed The Occasions through e-mail that due to numerous Pleasure season commitments this 12 months, the Sisters will be unable to attend the Dodgers occasion as an official group, though some members might attend individually and never in nun personas.
Final 12 months’s protest was organized and promoted by a gaggle known as Catholics For Catholics. There isn’t any point out of Pleasure Night time protests on the group’s web site this 12 months. The group didn’t instantly reply to questions from The Occasions.
The Catholic League for Spiritual and Civil Rights advocacy group ran radio advertisements a 12 months in the past calling for a boycott of the Pleasure Night time sport due to the plan to honor the Sisters. A Catholic League consultant informed The Occasions that no such plans had been being made at the moment relating to Friday’s sport.
Additionally through the week main as much as final 12 months’s Pleasure Night time, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez introduced that his service hours earlier than the evening’s occasions can be devoted “for therapeutic because of the hurt brought on by the Dodgers’ resolution to honor a gaggle that deliberately denigrates and profanes the Christian religion.” No such announcement seems on the Archdiocese of Los Angeles web site this 12 months. The group didn’t instantly return a name from The Occasions.
