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By Shannon Power
Pop Culture & Entertainment Reporter
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The Los Angeles Dodgers suffered a strike-out after the baseball team celebrated Pride Month as their social media audience took a hit.
L.A's baseball team faced backlash from conservative fans because an LGBTQ+ band, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was invited to the annual Pride Night at Dodger Stadium on June 16. The group, who dress up in drag as nuns, were invited to the night, then disinvited and eventually reinvited to the ball game.
The baseball team has suffered a blow in the past month, as it lost a little more than 7,000 followers on Twitter, according to social media statistics website Social Blade.
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Things were worse on Instagram where the baseball team lost 15,540 followers in the same amount of time, and as of June 19 had 3.1 million followers.
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The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence describe themselves as an "order of queer and trans nuns" who promotes human rights, community service and spiritual enlightenment.
But for conservative Christians it was not so enlightening. The Sisters involvement at the game was described as "diabolical," by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
After a lot of back and forth between the conservatives and LGBTQ+ groups, the Dodgers eventually allowed the Sisters to perform at the club's Pride Night on Friday.
The Dodgers suffered a loss on social media, but it is not clear if it was directly related to their commitment to Pride Month. However, the largest falls did occur in the immediate days on either side of the controversial Friday night ball game.
A clip of an empty Dodgers stadium at Friday's game went viral, which conservatives used as proof on Twitter that the L.A. Dodgers had alienated their fan base by going "woke."
Some people at the game pointed out the reason the stadium looked so empty was because protesters were blocking access to the venue through the main entrance on Vin Scully Avenue.
"I have a theory on why the stadium might be so empty. It's on the right," said attorney and former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, sharing an image of the empty stadium next to one of the protests outside the stadium.
Actor Kevin T. Williams suggested the photos of an empty stadium didn't reflect reality.
"Game is sold out and maybe 1/3 of the seats are empty. Like every other night in LA," he wrote in a selfie post from the game.
The backlash to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence comes as the Human Rights Council declared a "state of emergency" for LGBTQ+ people due to the "worst year on record," in state legislatures.
More than 525 bills focusing on the LGBTQ+ community were introduced in different states and of those, 220 targeted transgender people, including access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans people, especially minors.
Of the 525 bills, 76 have been signed into law so far, which is more than any other year on record.
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