Under the Banner of Heaven

💡 Did You Know?

Series creator and adapter Dustin Lance Black was raised in the LDS Church. In a July 2022 interview with Kim Masters on KCRW's show "The Business," he said, "I saw my mother being abused [and] the church preferring she lean on church authority, as opposed to police authority, and that really didn't resolve things because it's the woman's place in Mormon home to create a home suitable to her priesthood holder, the father in the home. But the thing that's most disturbing about having witnessed that is how unremarkable it was. It was not just her. My mother was the president of the Relief Society in our area, which is the women's group in the church, and I was keenly aware that our story was not special." He also said that he was "very attached" to the church as a teen, despite the discomfort he felt with its intolerant policy on LGBTQ rights and his growing realization that he was gay. "I was devout. I didn't know any different. It's how the design of the church is. I was six days a week in church, which I enjoyed, whether that's Sunday school, or Boy Scouts. It was all Mormon, and it's all I knew. And it felt very safe. So leaving the church was not something I wanted to do, but I followed my mother out as a teenager."