Grand Mother Vish-Knew
(formerly known as Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch)
Founder of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in 1979. A contemporary of Harvey Milk. I moved to San Francisco in January 1979 from a Gay farm in Iowa City, Iowa. I Brought the Sisters first 5 Catholic nun's habits to San Francisco from my drag troupe in Iowa ("The Sugar Plum Fairies"). We acquired the habits from the local Catholic convent. We said we were doing a performance of the "Sound of Music", but really used them for a drag show. One bored Easter weekend in 1979 my roomate and I donned the habits to have some fun, and it turned into a worldwide spiritual, community service, activist, performance and artist organization of Sisters. My activism began in Iowa Mennonite High School in Iowa, and continued at Mennonite Hesston College in Kansas. I was the second person in the U.S. to apply for a same-sex marriage license, in 1976.