SAN FRANCISCO (RNS) — The most popular Easter service in this capital of alternative living occurs not in church but on the sloping lawns of Dolores Park, where thousands show up in their Sunday best — which at the annual Hunky Jesus Contest can mean steampunk bonnets, a life-size Peep suit or, for those competing, elaborate (and usually scanty) Jesus and Mary costumes.
The event is hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the global nonprofit group of drag nuns founded in San Francisco on Easter Sunday 46 years ago. Over the years, “Hunky Jesus” has expanded from a small anniversary celebration for the sisters alone to a raucous, all-day affair. Today, the free festival includes a family egg hunt, musical acts and a “canonization” ceremony in which community members are recognized for service.
Today, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have hundreds of members across the U.S. and in 14 countries. Made up of queer and trans individuals, the sisters are not affiliated with the Catholic Church or any official religious organization. But like traditional nuns, they do take lifelong vows of service and see their work as “ministry and outreach to those on the margins.”
The day’s biggest draw, of course, is its eponymous contest: A handful of competitors vie for the titles of Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary. Last year’s winning Jesus, very of-the-moment, was “Ken Jesus,” who blasphemed both the box-office giant “Barbie” and the resurrection by sporting a pink crown of thorns and a blond bowl cut, striking a crucified pose in the doll’s distinctive box.
His packaging even included a disclaimer: “Actual miracles not included.”
From the outset, the sisters and their Easter celebration have drawn calls of sacrilege and bigotry, even by some progressive and gay Christians. In 2023, after the Los Angeles Dodgers announced plans to recognize the sisters for public service, then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio decried them as “a group that mocks Christians through diabolical parodies of our faith.”
Overview of the 2024 Easter festivities at Dolores Park in San Francisco. (Photo by Ardo Servito, courtesy of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)
Nonetheless, in a metro area famous for its gay culture but where the number of nonreligious nearly equals the Christian population, many San Franciscans consider Hunky Jesus their Easter tradition. The event offers a playful space to celebrate both the Christian holiday and the LGBTQIA+ community. Attendees describe the day as liberatory, joyful and even sacred.
“The Easter event is probably the most spiritual, beautiful, uplifting, holy event I can think of,” said Sister Roma, the celebration’s longtime emcee. “It’s just about pure love.”
The sisters were among the first activists to serve gay men affected by AIDS. Over the years, the organization has organized HIV benefits, offered sex education, served the unhoused, advocated for public safety and raised tens of thousands of dollars for school programs and more.
The sisters, according to co-founder Ken Bunch, were born out of boredom. Bunch (later Sister Vish Knew) moved from Iowa to the Castro District in the late 1970s, bringing along some nuns’ habits that he and his drag troupe acquired from a convent in Cedar Rapids.
On a lark, Bunch and two friends decided to don the habits on Easter Sunday 1979, walking through the streets of the city. The public’s reaction was “electric,” Bunch recently told Little Village Magazine.
Exhilarated, the trio wore the outfits again at a gay softball game. By 1980, they had a name for their organization, new nun monikers and a mission statement: to “promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt.”
It was that beginning, and not necessarily Easter itself, that the sisters chose to celebrate annually. In time, though, the anniversary and high holy day bled into one another.
On Easter 1995, two sisters started a controversial pub crawl that parodied the Stations of the Cross. Four years later, on its 20th anniversary, the organization obtained a permit to host an Easter block party. Some city residents were incensed. A spokesman for the Roman Catholic archdiocese compared it to “allowing a group of neo-Nazis to close a city street for a celebration on the Jewish feast of Passover.”
Sister Roma was there for the 1999 Easter party — the first time, in her recollection, there was a Hunky Jesus Contest. The event was intended as a thank-you to San Francisco for allowing the sisters to “be of service with them,” she said. Five thousand people showed up. The next year, the sisters moved the celebration to Dolores Park, where it has mostly remained ever since. In 2024, an estimated 10,000 people attended.
Devlin Shand, a photographer, has competed twice for the Hunky Jesus title, coming in second in 2016 with Drop Dead Jesus, performing a “death drop” — a dramatic drag move he has never done before or since. “I actually rolled my ankle on the stage,” he said. “But it was worth it.”
Shand first attended after relocating to San Francisco in 2014. “It was what I moved to San Francisco for: that kind of irreverent, joyful energy that allows you to poke fun at something.” A queer gay man who was raised Catholic, Shand said, “It’s no secret that queer people are oppressed by Christianity. This whole event really is reclamation of the things that have held us down.”
Participants in the 2023 Easter festivities at Dolores Park in San Francisco. (Photo by Gooch, courtesy of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)
While Shand no longer identifies as Christian, some LGBTQ individuals who do have more complicated feelings around the sisters’ Easter party. The conservative Catholic writer Andrew Sullivan, who is gay, infamously railed against the event in 2011, challenging the sisters to “hold a Hunky Mohammad Contest on Ramadan.”
The Rev. Donal Godfrey, an openly gay Jesuit priest and chaplain at the University of San Francisco, has a more measured response. “Clearly it is controversial,” he said by email. As a matter of respect, Godfrey would prefer the event not be “played out in a public park.”
At the same time, he noted, he is far more disturbed by, say, the Trump administration’s recent deportations to El Salvador. “I believe the Christian God must find that much more deeply blasphemous.”
Others see harmony between the holiday and Hunky Jesus. Julia Tremaroli, a data analyst who was raised Catholic, said she has never “felt any sort of disrespect towards Jesus, Mary and the Catholic religion” at the event. Instead, Tremaroli, who identifies as queer-curious, finds the day to be a “Venn diagram” that brings together current and former Christians and the LGBTQ+ community and “finds the beauty at the center.”
“It’s so much more than just a drag show or a costume contest,” she said. “It’s a community event that celebrates what is good and can be good about Easter and Catholicism.”
As irreverent as Hunky Jesus is, Sister Merry Peter explained, the contest embodies a core principle of the sisters: “using the symbology of these traditions to open up a conversation with a society.”
Attendees of the 2024 Easter festivities at Dolores Park in San Francisco. (Photo by Gooch, courtesy of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)
Often, that conversation has a political edge. Last year, state Sen. Scott Wiener stepped up to the mic and called out, “Let’s hear it for triggering the right-wing extremists!” He earned cheers from the crowd — and coverage from Fox News.
This year, the event’s theme is especially pointed: “No Easter without the T.” “We are definitely expressing solidarity with the trans members of our community, who are under really vicious and cynical attack right now,” said Sister Merry Peter.
“It’s always been an act of defiance and solidarity,” said Shand, but in a time when the Trump administration is unwinding the rights of trans people and some emboldened lawmakers are threatening same-sex marriage, Hunky Jesus is taking on an added level of resistance.
“Right now is a moment that requires courage and requires community, which our Easter definitely creates,” Sister Merry Peter said.
Over the years, she has encountered people from all walks of life at the Hunky Jesus Contest — including, she said, traditional Catholic nuns.
That kind of diversity creates courage, Sister Merry Peter argued. “You may be an Irish nun sitting on your picnic blanket, but you might be next to a 300-pound drag queen in a giant pink Easter bonnet.
“That’s going to give you a sense that, maybe, there’s a little more room to express yourself than you grew up with.”