On Monday, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced a reversal of their stupid and cowardly decision last week to cave to pressure from right-wing culture warriors and disinvite a venerable charity group from upcoming Pride Night festivities. Citing "thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities," the major-league team apologized to the Los Angeles Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and announced that they were reinvited to the June 16 event, to "receive the gratitude of our collective communities."
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) May 22, 2023
This is a satisfying resolution, but the Dodgers don't come by this change of heart entirely on their own. In the hours after the team's original decision, the Los Angeles LGBT Center and LA Pride announced that in solidarity with the Sisters, they would not participate in the scheduled Pride Night. With these two organizations boycotting and with the Sisters disinvited, the Dodgers were left in the awkward situation of either canceling the event altogether or hosting a gloomy and sparsely attended Pride event tuned to represent the weaponized sensitivities of astroturfing bigots, who under no circumstances would participate in an event intended to celebrate the Los Angeles LGBTQ community. Monday's walk-back was less a triumph of courage than a weighing of competing PR crises.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose whiny letter to commissioner Rob Manfred started the uproar that led to the Dodgers' ill-advised move last week, complained Monday that the baseball team had been "bullied" into re-inviting "anti-Catholic bigots," and tried to frame the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, LA Pride, and the LA LGBT Center as a tier of "socio-political ruling elites" who "encourage and celebrate" anti-Christian bigotry. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has yet to comment on this setback to his decades-long campaign of antagonism, as he appeared to be busy Monday night ranting about how the Biden administration is allowing "drug cartels and their illegal alien stooges" to flood the southern border with enough fentanyl to "kill approximately 3.2 billion people." These are the people briefly empowered by the Dodgers to define who merits recognition at a Pride celebration.
