Our Mission.

MISSION

The Space City Sisters’ mission is to engage with the LGBTQ+ community in promoting diversity, bringing awareness to social causes and promoting safer sex practices while spreading universal joy and helping to expiate shame, guilt, and self-hatred.

VISION

The Space City Sisters exist as a modern, communal Order of 21st century nuns dedicated to community service, fund raising, outreach, advocacy, education for safer sex awareness, and promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment. We believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty and we use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit. We vow to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt through public manifestation and habitual perpetration.

Diversity

Originally, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence statement contained the phrase “Gay Male Nuns”. Now our vision and philosophy have broadened, becoming more inclusive and more consistent with the other aspects of our mission. We are a queer family. “Queer” means the freedom to be an individual within a close-knit family of individuals. The sisterhood, priesthood or any subset of the Space City Sisters membership is open to all people. We gladly welcome all races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations. We are as diverse as our community; therefore, we must be all-inclusive and non-judgmental when it comes to our membership.

Social Activism

Members of the Order are, by their very nature, agents of political change. Some members wish to identify only with the social service or spiritual aspects of the Order, but there is no escape from the controversial and political qualities of the membership. While we are active in the political sphere, we do not, as an Order, or individually while presenting oneself as a member of the Order, take positions on individual candidates running for office. Members of Space City Sisters plan demonstrations and affect various social issues or organize parties to raise money for charities.

Social Service

When we are asked, “Why are you mocking nuns?” we answer: “We are nuns!” The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence printed the world’s first safe sex pamphlet, and organized the first AIDS benefit. We do all that traditional nuns have done for centuries. We have raised lots of money for AIDS and other social causes. We visit the sick, feed the hungry and generally, service the community. We are 21st century nuns!

Freedom of Expression

In keeping with this philosophy, we believe there should be few restrictions on our artistic creativity. Although rare, at certain events the Space City Sisters require all Postulants, Novices and Fully Professed Members to wear traditional habits, which are usually accessorized with buttons, jewelry, hats, makeup, etc. Most of the time, we are encouraged to develop wild, abstract habits incorporating the whiteface makeup and wimple into the appearance. This allows the individual open and unrestricted expression. We are artists, as well as social activists, and our faces and bodies are our canvases.

Commitment

Although members attaining Fully Professed status are considered members for life, the road to that end is not an easy one. The Order requires its members, especially new ones, to demonstrate commitment to the ideals of the Order, the community at large and to the individuals that comprise the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. As with all nuns, priests, clerics, shamans, Brahmins and other holy individuals around the world, there is inherent in their title an immense amount of self-sacrifice. Space City Sisters members may not always agree with each other on a particular direction that the Order is pursuing, but they are expected to work for the good of the group and the community. Members have performed mundane but necessary services to the Order, participated in functions that they would not normally care to attend and given up some of their personal freedoms so that the group would flourish. This is what it is to be a nun, what it is to support the community and what it is to serve the human race.