Our nuns of perpetual drag

On June 19, seven days after Omar Mateen's shootout left 49 dead and injured 53 in Orlando's Pulse gay bar, a group of nuns made their way to the Lake Eola Park neighbourhood. They comprised just a handful of the 50,000-strong crowd that congregated for the candlelight vigil. Yet, they were prominently placed in the next day's papers.

The nuns are used to the attention. Drama is writ on their faces, with face gems, glitter, beads and sequins atop whiteface make-up – the kind reminiscent of carnival maquillage. But that's just one differentiator from other habit- and wimple-wearing sisters.

They were at the forefront of the White Night riots (1979) in San Francisco (SF), when the city erupted against the lenient sentencing of Dan White, who shot dead gay rights activists Harvey Milk and George Moscone. They created Playfair, the world's first safe sex pamphlet. They raise $40,000+ yearly for causes ranging from disaster relief to Crohn's Disease awareness and host the Halloween in the Castro, Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary events. They have, in their own words, "expiated stigmatic guilt" for 37 years now.

These are the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), an order of ''queer nuns'' who use drag and religious symbolism to fight sexual intolerance. And their most visible ambassador, Sister Roma, is the (self-professed) most photographed nun in the world.

"People think we make fun of nuns. Nothing is farther from the truth. We are nuns," he says. "We minister to the community, feed the hungry and visit the sick, educate and enlighten. We are queer, modern-day nuns of the 21st century."

The story of Sister Roma – full name Sister There's No Place Like Rome – is as riveting as that of SPI itself. Born Michael Williams in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the academically-bright Roma was in a Catholic college when his Catholic mother – who'd adopted him from a Catholic agency – discovered his journal, rife with details of his (gay) sex life.

"I'd also included notes about which of my female cousins had the hottest husband," he laughs. "She was so ashamed by what she read, she considered turning on the gas in the middle of the night to kill me in my sleep."

The Catholic backdrop is ironical: it took SF, the beating heart of the LGBT movement, to transform Williams into a nun and eventually turn his mother into his closest ally. "I was never moved spiritually or inspired to do anything charitable or civic-minded until I met the Sisters," says the tall, aquiline-nosed and feather-head-dressed 53-year-old. Roma, a drag icon, emcee and art director of gay adult film studio Naked Sword, is also an ordained minister under the Perpetual Indulgence Ministry Program (PIMP) and has married off six couples.

When Williams joined SPI in 1987, the US was rife with fear, misinformation and prejudice during the AIDS epidemic. Everyone was afraid to drink out of the same glass, use the same toilets, and touch HIV+ people. In this environment was born SPI's path-breaking Playfair – still updated and printed today. Roma then introduced the 'Stop the Violence' movement in response to homophobic crimes in SF's Castro district. In 2014, she took on Facebook through the#MyNameIs campaign to protest its 'real name' policy (that forced people to not use stage names or pseudonyms) – and won.

The history of drag is the history of mankind, a pointer to the evolution of gender, sexuality, counterculture and protest. Take the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the spark lit by drag queens, kings and trans people that marked the beginning of gay liberation.

"Men and women have worn clothing of the opposite gender – privately and publicly –for centuries. The function of drag is as fluid and changing as drag itself. Some queens only perform in drag. Others do it to blur lines between gender, sexuality, and sanity," Roma explains. "SPI turns it into activism. There are hundreds of reasons to do drag, and none of them is wrong."

"Drag can bring so much love, light and laughter into a dull world. It breaks down people's preconceived notions about masculinity, femininity, and more. Like I always say, it takes balls to wear a dress."

• Though associated with drag queens, SPI welcomes people of all orientations and genders. Members can also present as Fathers, Guards and Brothers.
   
• The process of becoming a fully-professed Sister takes a year and is preceded by three stages: Volunteer/Initiate, Postulant, and Novice. Deceased members are referred to as 'Nuns of the Above'.
   
•  Wordplay and puns are pivotal to ordained names. Gems include Agatha Frisky, Hellen Wheels, Opus Gay, Sybil Libertease, Betti Crotche and Porn Again.