Dustin Lance Black got an early life lesson in unfairness. His mother, Roseanne, was paralysed from the waist down, after childhood polio that also left her with severe scoliosis. She didn’t use a wheelchair, but walked with leg braces and crutches.
“I was aware from a very young age that many people did not respond well to how different she looked,” says Black. “It angered me as a kid, because I knew who she was. I knew, if anything, she was smarter than most of the people I would meet – more capable, more driven. And I loved my mom deeply. So to see her being treated as somehow less than whole because of her differences infuriated me. I think that is where my sense of justice comes from.”
