Thanks to Grand Mother Vicious Power Hungry Bitch, a founder of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for the following information. Scroll down for the blow-by-blow description of Sistory and History of Whiteface. 

​

From Origins to Founding of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
January 1977 I moved to San Francisco from a communal gay Radical Fairy farm outside of Iowa City, Iowa and that is where the “ORIGIN” story of the Sisters begins.
To explain what I mean by “ORIGINS” as opposed to “FOUNDING”, think of it this way:
The Stonewall riots in 1969 is considered the FOUNDING of the modern queer rights movement, but of course the ORIGIN of this movement goes back decades before 1969.
Our “ORIGINS”, the SEEDS of SPI’s creation, can be traced directly back to Iowa in the mid-1970’s.
In 1974, 75 and 76 at the University of Iowa, Fred Brungard and I co-produced the first Midwest Gay Pride Conferences. This was at a time when the state of Iowa gay organizations consisted of 3 bars and two student groups.
At the same time I formed a traveling drag performance troupe in Iowa City called The Sugar Plum Fairies, consisting of myself, Tracy Bjorgum, Susan Short Gilbert (cis-gender female),Lisa (a transgender woman), and Michael Salinas (who later became editor of one of the most important gay newspapers in the U.S.-The Bay Area Reporter). We performed in the 4 gay bars that existed across the state . During a weekly session planning our next performance Susan said, “I know the Mother Superior in the Catholic school I attended in Cedar Rapids (Iowa). Mother Superior is a good friend of mine. When nuns die there they put their habits into storage. If I ask her if I can borrow some habits she’ll probably loan them to us.” Susan went to the Mother Superior and told her we were doing a production of “The Sound Of Music” and she got 4 habits, and we never returned them. . The original names of the dead nuns were still sewn into the habit collars. My favorite was “Sister Fink”. We performed at the few gay bars across the state of Iowa. Most drag shows at the time consisted of classic diva tributes (Diana Ross, Judy Garland, etc.) Queens weren’t ready for the iconoclasm about to engulf them! When we hit the stage doing a pompon routine to the U.of I. Fight Song the audienceEXPLODED, erupting into pandemonium every time!
Following the final Midwest Day Pride Conference in 1976, Tracy and I realized we were preaching to the converted and needed a way of reaching the general public with our messages of gay liberation, challenging their homophobia. I suggested to Tracy we apply for a marriage license, knowing the statewide media would give us wide visibility. At this time most people did not think they knew a gay person. The whole word “gay” was not familiar to most Iowan’s. In their minds queers were imaginary child molesters with horns and tails. We set out to show the people of Iowa that a gay person could be their neighbor, friend, relative and co-worker. Privately to our friends we called it ‘A Fag In Every Living Room Campaign”.
We were the FIRST people to apply for a same-sex marriage license in the state of Iowa. The statewide mainstream newspaper The Des Moines Register carried our photo and story applying for the license . This is how I “came out” to my parents!
After moving to San Francisco in January 1977 I returned from San Francisco to Iowa to collect my clothes. I had “come out of the closet” in 1973 and lived every day in gender-fuck drag, as a political statement. I was getting out of drag and into the new leather/levi “Clone”look that gay men were adopting. I remember sitting there with a garbage can on one side of me and a suitcase on the other side. All my drag went into the garbage can until I got to the habits. Funny how sometimes history hangs on one simple decision…garbage…suitcase…garbage…SUITCASE! I decided they would be the ONLY drag I would keep “in case one day I get bored”. I joke that if I had not kept those nun’s habits we might have become the CLOWNS of Perpetual Indulgence. :)
In 1978 I convinced Fred Brungard to move to San Francisco and live with me. We found a cottage apartment at 272 Dolores Street.
The atmosphere in San Francisco at the time was VERY conformist. S.F. Chronicle columnist dubbed it “the Castro Clone” look. On Holy Saturday (day before Easter) 1979 I announced to Fred that I was bored and “the only thing different that I have are those nun’s habits I brought with me from Iowa”. Fred, myself and Bruce (Barouk) Golden, my friend I met thru Transcendental Meditation, dressed up in those habits and terrorized the Castro, Lands End and Polk Street. I was “armed”with a squirt gun  spraying pedestrians with “Holy Water “. There were psychological “car wrecks” left and right. The reaction even in liberal and jaded San Francisco that first day out was electric. We were shocked that they were shocked. We thought San Franciscans had seen everything: Cockettes, Angels of Light, Cycle Sluts, Hipies, Beatniks, etc.
In June of 1979 the Gay Softball League played against the San Francisco Fire Department in a game in Kezar Stadium. I asked my friend Edmund Garron to come along to the game. I said,” Now, we can go as normal looking college cheerleaders or as nun cheerleaders.” We decided the habits I had from Iowa would be more fun. We ran around the rim of the stadium and ran our veils up the flagpole. We caused so much distraction with the crowd cheering us that the game had to be stopped temporarily. That experience exposed Edmund to the powerful impact of those nuns habits. I then introduced my roommate Fred Brungard (who became Sister Missionary Position) to my friends Bill Graham (Reverend Mother) and Edmund Garron (who became Agnes- Sister Hysterectoria).
I had met Edmund in a dance class in San Francisco in 1977 run by a lesbian friend (Francesca Dubee) who had moved to San Francisco from Iowa . Bill was a teacher in the gay Transcendental Meditation group I had formed with him in San Francisco in 1977. The 4 of us moved into a flat at 231 Ashbury Street in the summer of 1979 which eventually became known as “The Convent”.
The 4 of us discussed the tremendous reaction that Fred, Edmund and I had experienced in my nuns habits that Easter weekend and at the softball game and decided we needed to form an organization to harnesss this energy. We felt that we had stumbled onto a stick of social dynamite that could be used for the service of our community, and activism to address oppressive institutions in society.
We discussed our mutual experiences we had in those nun’s habits earlier in the year. The general consensus between us was that we should form a group, making use of the intense energy this iconic symbol seemed to evoke not only in the general public, but also in ourselves. Maybe we could use this as a tool for social activism and have some fun as well.  
Edmund and Billy attended the first Fairie Gathering in late August 1979 and returned with people interested in the idea.
At the August 1979 Castro Street Fair I appeared in that Iowa habit with white-face makeup and the squirt gun when I was photographed by JB Carhaix, who would become our most prominent photographer for the next 17 years.
 
The 4 of us pulled together all our friends who were interested in joining this new group of queer nuns for a meeting in the Haightneighborhood. At this meeting we conceived our Mission Statement to “promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt”. As we debated what name to call ourselves, I disappeared into the bathroom. When I emerged the group had settled on our name, so, to this day, I have no idea who finally came up with that name! But The Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence wasFOUNDED!
Edmund (akaAgnes) designed our nun head wimples based on a Flemish 14th century lady-in-waiting and commissioned the San Francisco Neighborhood Arts and Costume Bank to sew and create them and our new habits for the new group. We kept the Iowa nuns habits in our archives and still have them today.
The apartment where the 4 of us lived on Ashbury Street became known as “The Convent” and was where all our monthly membership meetings were held for the first 2 years, until an auxillary house of SPI nuns were formed called "The Brain Trust", a block away, at which point we alternated meetings between the 2 locations. For the first year membership meetings were held every 2 weeks due to our intense activity calendar. Our 231 Ashbury telephone was the SPI telephone line.
In 1980, Fabian, a friend of Sister Missionary Position who became Mother Abbyss (formerly Mother Inferior) came to stay the night in The Convent. After being exposed to our Sister activities he returned to Sydney, Australia and formed the second Order of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI). The third Order of SPI in the world was in Toronto, Canada (which no longer exists) and the fourth Order of SPI in the entire world (second in the United States) was in Seattle, Washington founded by Mother Theresa Nervina in 1987. In 1990 the first French Order was formed in Paris by Archimere RITA du Calvaire-de-Marie-Madeleine-Car-Elle-Aussi-A-Beaucoup-Souffert .Shortly after that the first German Order was formed by Erzmutter JOHANNA Indulgentia in Heidelberg. Today Orders are formed or forming on four continents.
And my original Sister name was Sister Adhanarisvara, a Hindu god, half masculine, half feminine.
Over the next year after our Founding our friends also took nun names:
Paul Brown became Sister Loganberry Frost.
Frank Breyton became Sister Mary Media.
Jack Fertig became Sister Rose Of The Bloody Stains Of The Sacred Robes Of Jeeesus, or Boom Boom.
So though The Sisters were officially FOUNDED in San Francisco, we can trace our direct ORIGINS back to those habits of those poor dead Catholic nuns from Iowa, that inspired a new generation of QUEER nuns all over the world.
Our first experiences in those Iowa nun’s habits in 1979 were the flame that became a roaring bonfire blazing across the world to this very day.
If only those Catholic nuns and Mother Superior in Cedar Rapids, Iowa knew what their habits had ignited!!!And we have those Iowa Catholic nuns habits stored in our San Francisco archive.
Grand Mother Vish-Knew (aka:Vicious Power Hungry Bitch)
a Founder of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
San Francisco
 

​​

​Grand Mother Vicious Power Hungry Bitch

a Founder of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

San Francisco