- The LA Dodgers’ LGBTQ Delight Night time turned controversial when an activist group that offended the non secular proper was invited.
- Conservatives touted a video of a virtually empty stadium as a win, crediting it to a boycott.
- Although MLB tracks attendance solely when it comes to tickets purchased, photographs present our bodies in seats.
Conservatives seem gleeful that they might have simply scored one other culture-war win — this time via Main League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers.
However their declare to have efficiently boycotted a Dodgers recreation for its LGBTQ Delight participation and visitors — notably echoed by the presidential candidate Ron DeSantis — seem like false based mostly on ticket gross sales and photographs from the sport.
Main as much as the staff’s tenth annual LGBTQ+ Delight Night time, the Dodgers disinvited after which reinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a nonprofit “order of queer and trans nuns,” which some non secular conservatives discovered to be offensive to Christianity and Catholicism.
“We now have requested the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to take their place on the sphere at our tenth annual LGBTQ+ Delight Night time on June sixteenth,” the staff stated in its reinvitation assertion shared on Twitter. “We’re happy to share that they’ve agreed to obtain the gratitude of our collective communities for the lifesaving work that they’ve accomplished tirelessly for many years.”
Whereas the satirical group was given a neighborhood activism award at Dodgers stadium previous to the sport on Friday, non secular teams protested outdoors the stadium and briefly shut down the principle entrance, the Los Angeles Occasions reported.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who just lately launched his 2024 presidential bid, tweeted in help of the protesters and claimed the stadium was “virtually empty.” Some critics of the occasion circulated photographs and videos, which had been reportedly taken earlier than the opening pitch, of a near-empty stadium.
“The just about empty stadium for the sport itself was a strong picture,” DeSantis stated in his tweet. “Individuals are fed up with the nonsense and are preventing again.”
Notably, the quantity of people that purchased tickets to the Delight occasion surpassed the common attendance to video games this season. In response to information stored by ESPN, the common attendance to every recreation has been 48,024.
Pictures from the ballgame additionally present our bodies in seats within the stadium.
“Our paid attendance on Friday night time was 49,074,” Joe Jareck, senior director of public relations for the Dodgers, advised Insider in a remark.
Jareck declined to reply Insider’s different questions in regards to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the protesters.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — which hosts occasions for queer youths and adults and pays out grants to small neighborhood organizations that cater to marginalized individuals — shared a press release saying the invitation ordeal got here with a “silver lining.”
“Our group has been strengthened, protected and uplifted to a place the place we could now supply our message of hope and pleasure to much more individuals than earlier than. With nice love and respect, we thank every individual and every group which have spoken up for us,” the group stated in a press release on their web site.
Correction: June 21, 2023 — An earlier model of this text didn’t precisely describe the attendance at Dodgers’ Delight Night time. Extra tickets had been offered to the sport than common, based on the Dodgers, however that information does not mirror in-person attendance.
