Dustin Lance Black
Peter Stanford meets Tom Daley’s talented and outspoken husband
Growing up in a Mormon family in a deeply conservative military town in Texas in the early Eighties, Dustin Lance Black was told repeatedly and unambiguously that homosexuality was “akin to murder”. Yet he already knew that he was attracted to other boys. The only way he could square the circle, he recalls, was to retreat into silence.
“I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be noticed. I feared any careful examination. And so I didn’t speak for about three years, from age six to nine. Isn’t that ‘Wow’? Now I can’t stop talking.”
He certainly can’t. In his brickwalled warehouse home in south London, the 44-year-old’s words come tumbling out, the twang of the southern United States in his accent undiminished by living on this side of the Atlantic since falling in love in 2013 with Tom Daley, the Olympic diver.
The couple married two years ago and have a nine-month-old son, Robbie. As he talks, Black – always known as Lance, though his father chose “Dustin” after Dustin Hoffman – is sitting amid baby-walkers and buggies, all stored beneath two striking framed David Hockney portraits of an all-but-naked Daley.
It is probably the same buggy that last weekend caused Black to explode some angry words on social media in a very public row, accusing British Swimming authorities of corruption, lying and creating a “toxic and unsafe environment for their family” after he wasn’t able to take Robbie in his buggy to watch “Papa” Daley win gold in a Diving World Series event at London’s Aquatic Centre.
Professionally, Black’s way with words has won him a precocious Oscar in his early 30s for his screenplay for the 2008 film Milk, while his gift for platform oratory saw him take a leading role in a movement that led the US Supreme Court in 2011 to rule as unconstitutional moves by individual states to ban same-sex marriage.
“My mom would watch me giving speeches on TV,” he remembers, “and she’d call and say, ‘I don’t know who this son is’.” How had the boy who had refused to speak for so many years become so passionately articulate? It is a transformation that he charts in Mama’s Boy, part memoir, and part love letter to his mother, Anne, who died in 2017.
And – because, while Black may use a lot of words now, sometimes in anger, he also makes them earn their keep – it is also part heartfelt plea for tolerance. If a Mormon mother and her gay son could find a way forward when, aged 21, he came out to her, then the rest of us on both sides of the Atlantic should also be able to locate common ground in our families, communities and nations, fractured in our divided times.
“What I’ve started to get concerned about over the past three years is watching the increasing division between family members in this country over things like Brexit, and in my country over things like the election of [Donald] Trump. Have I always agreed with my southern, military, Mormon family? Absolutely not. Have we always figured out how to get along? Yes! At the point at which politics supersedes the family and community, we’ve got a real problem.”
Black’s mother, born Roseanna, was the daughter of poor sharecroppers in Louisiana. As a small child, she contracted polio and was told she would never walk. With metal rods in her back and crutches, she proved the doctors wrong. Marriage and having a family were also ruled out, but she went on to have three husbands and three sons (Marcus, Todd, with “Lancer”, as she called him, in the middle). Because their father, Raul, was a Mormon, Anne had given up her studies to be a doctor to marry him, and joined his church. He repaid her sacrifice by cheating on her. Her second husband, army staff sergeant Merrill, also a Mormon, beat her up, but she finally found peace with Jeff, her third, another soldier and, this time, a lapsed Catholic.
“I shouldn’t be sitting here now,” Lance says. “She wasn’t told that it would be unhealthy for her to have children, but that it would kill her. And, frankly, I think the doctors were right. Technically, she stopped breathing on the operating table having me, because she had a cold that she hid from the doctors while
having a caesarean. And she loved to use that against me when it was time to do my chores. ‘I died having you – can’t you at least go vacuum the living room?’ ”
If the chores were a drudge, then finding his way as he grew up between his sexuality and the all-encompassing presence in his life of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS, as the Mormons refer to themselves) was plain torture.
“I used to tell myself I was never going to act on it. I was going to keep it hidden. I didn’t realise the toll that would take. I thought I could successfully do it [including, aged 19, trying desperately to get his thengirlfriend pregnant], but it ended up being soul-crushing.”
When he finally headed to Los Angeles to university, and slowly and tentatively came out, he kept it secret from the family until finally he could no longer. There followed a period of estrangement, including from both his brothers, though “redneck” car mechanic Marcus was also later to reveal himself as gay. But – though Anne’s religious faith had remained strong, even when she escaped a violent second marriage and left the Mormons – the mother-son bond eventually saw them through. She was at his side when he won his Oscar.
Is he still religious? Black is giving a talk about his new book at nearby Southwark Cathedral. Given his experiences growing up – and the enduring homophobia in many branches of Christianity – he must be tempted to give the whole thing a wide berth? “We do that as human beings all too often when we disagree with people,” he answers. “I think it is lazy, shows no curiosity.”
But organised religion traumatised him as a child and would deny him the right to marry and have children? “Yes, of course. I’d say I’m not sure about Christianity, but I sure do like their Christ and the lessons about turning the other cheek, about forgiveness, of yourself and others. It is hard. I am not going to say it is easy. I still feel angry. I still hear about the way the Mormons and other churches treat young LGBT people horribly. And it boils my blood.”
In the fight in the US over equal marriage, the LDS was one of the main funders of the opposition. “Yes, and some of the people I campaigned with wanted to see the LDS destroyed. That’s just not going to happen. They are survivalists. So what we ought to do is get into the same room and start to have the conversations. I was called naïve at the time, but sometimes it works and cracks something open.” And so he has made a series of visits – “a handful”, he protests – to re-engage with the Mormon leadership. “I can’t claim credit for any changes, but they have started building relationships that have moved a church which used to be the most anti-gay, but now has a position that looks more like the Catholic Church. It is not ideal. You are no longer damned to Hell immediately. There are more conversations to have.”
In between his writing (which includes the hit US TV series Big Love about a polygamous Mormon family, and the film J Edgar) and the more recent joys of fatherhood, Black makes time to respond to LGBT people from around the world who contact him for advice on how to handle the prejudices they are facing. Do he and Daley see themselves as role models? “Inadvertent role models,” he corrects me. “Tom and I had the conversations about it, and early on we said we are just going to live our lives and make our mistakes. There is not going to be any design to being a role model.” What they definitely don’t do is allow the focus to fall on their son, Robbie. Black’s determination to keep him away from photographers seems to have been part of the reason for the recent spat with British Swimming.
And, for the same reason, they treat as private the details of the surrogacy arrangement that led to his birth, and their parenting plans. Still, their “inadvertent” openness and high profile in all other matters has made them a target for online abuse – and in his campaigning work in particular Black has received death threats – but he refuses to be intimidated back into silence. “There are times when there is an instinct to get defensive, or shy away, but there is also a responsibility when, for whatever reason, the spotlight has been pointed on you – a responsibility to answer those messages coming in. Often, I’ve no easy solution to suggest, but just knowing that someone is listening to you can be helpful.”
And the abuse? It must wound? “I try to ignore it, though when I’ve gotten death threats, I’ve had to report that.” From Mormons? “I don’t know. I don’t get into conversations
‘When politics supersedes family and community, we’ve got a problem’
‘Too many of my heroes have been cut down, but do I want security guards? No’
with them.” He laughs it off, but he knows all too well that it isn’t funny. “Of course, I worry. Too many of my heroes [notably Harvey Milk, subject of his Oscar-winning screenplay and the first openly gay elected official in California] have been cut down, but do I want security guards? No. I’ve been offered them in the past. But the more you present yourself as someone afraid of being attacked, the more people see you as someone to attack.”
Daley appears in the hallway, with a waving Robbie in his arms. It is time for a family outing, with Daley’s widowed mother, Debbie, joining them. As they pack up to go, I can’t help thinking that the Mama of the book would be proud.
Mama’s Boy by Dustin Lance Black (John Murray, £16.99) is out this week. Buy yours for £14.99 at books. telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1514