Under the Banner of…oh my heck, Ep. 5 spoilers

One Mighty and Strong…

…in which we see more of what can happen to women who try to fight back against oppressive patriarchy in their lives, and why so many women don’t.

Guest post by CJ Obray

23 May 2022

First, a reminder: This discussion is about the characters in the TV series. What we see of these characters on-screen sometimes makes notable departure from what may be known about the real-life individuals in the story upon which the series is based.

OK – moving along – to recap:

1. Brenda Lafferty stood up to her brothers-in-law and tried to help her sisters-in-law when things got ugly, and Ron and Dan killed her and her daughter because she dared to get in the way – she got too uppity.
2. Brenda unwittingly married into a family where the patriarchal order was well-established and firmly in control. She thought she knew what she was getting into. She thought they all shared the same beliefs, because Mormons tell themselves and teach their children that the church’s doctrine encompasses eternal and universal truths that can (and should) be embraced by everyone. When she figured out that the situation was vastly different from what she had assumed, she did what she could to try to change things – to help the Lafferty women, and to help the men to see where the problems were. She tried to break the cycle.
3. The Lafferty women had all been “properly taught” that the men were in charge, period, no debate. Grandma (Doreen) Lafferty knew what her assignment was: she was to help maintain the status quo. She deferred to her husband (Ammon) in all things, she taught her children to do the same, she tolerated the abuse he inflicted on her and on their children, and she made sure the children (and – eventually – their spouses) all did the same. Meanwhile, over time, Doreen quietly fed Ron’s ego. He was her favored son. She wanted him to step into his father’s shoes. Was this as much a desire for her husband to be replaced (thus releasing her from his oppression) as it was a desire for Ron to achieve his potential? That’s unclear at this point in the story, but a compelling argument could be made for this being at least part of her motivation.
4. What was it about Ron in particular that moved his mother to protect and encourage him? Was it just that he was her oldest child and her bond with him was stronger? Or did she see something else in him that made her think he was the most likely to successfully displace his father? Or maybe she was more afraid of Dan? Did she see that Dan was edgier, more arrogant, more dangerous? We see no evidence that Doreen ever stood up to the patriarchal men in her life, but instead found ways to protect herself by capitulating to them or working around them . I’m just guessing here, based on context, but it seems likely that she knew on a gut level that defying them would not be safe for her and could endanger her children. Instead, she did what so many women have had to do to survive: she acquiesced. She tried to minimize the damage by teaching her children to keep their heads down and avoid attracting attention.

When no one else was looking, she exercised from behind the scenes what little power she had by subversively encouraging and enabling Ron’s own aspirations. “You’re one heartbeat away from your rightful place as head of this family. You’re the one.” Was she suggesting that Ron should actively help Ammon move on to the next life? Did she honestly think Ron would be an improvement over his father? I’m just guessing, of course, but I suspect it was mostly hope. After enduring decades of abuse from her spouse, she probably couldn’t help wishing for a few years of relative peace and safety, and an alliance with her eldest son may have seemed like the best way to bring that about. We learn late in episode 5 that Ammon had made a practice of beating not just his children and animals, but his wife as well. Meanwhile, the neighbors and church people assumed that the Laffertys were a perfect family, because the children were well-behaved in public and their mother always smiled and acted as though everything was fine. If this family dynamic seems familiar, well, yeah.

This is just the surface layer of this story, though – the tight focus on one family. What Dustin Lance Black is trying to show us, if we will pay attention, is that the family dynamic of the Laffertys didn’t spring into existence in one generation, and it wasn’t and isn’t unique in either Brighamite Mormonism or in fundamentalist Mormonism. Doreen Lafferty was who she was for the same reasons Ammon Lafferty was who he was – they were products of the environment and culture in which they were born and raised. What we see on the screen – as a representative facsimile of life in Mormon Utah County in 1984 – is what the “sins of the fathers” can look like after many generations. It looks normal. So normal, in fact, that when Brother Bascom, the bank loan officer/member of Ron’s bishopric, is quizzed about his earlier duplicitous responses regarding whether Ron was upset with Dianna, Bascom replies, “I thought it was just a domestic.”

Just a domestic.

Let that sink in.

Bascom – good old Brother Bascom – thought it was normal. This kinda sorta suggests that he’d seen this sort of behavior before.

Is it any wonder, given that domestic violence is so normalized in our society (not just within Mormon culture but definitely within Mormon culture), that women who are trapped in dangerous home situations do whatever they can to survive? Sometimes that survival looks like complicit, enabling, willing behavior, as seems to have been the case with Doreen Lafferty. This is what the sins of the fathers can look like.

Sometimes it looks like proactive behavior, like begging church authorities for help; and sometimes it looks like adrenaline-powered, full-on mama bear behavior, like what we see with Dianna as she tries to protect herself and her children from her out-of-control husband.

Dianna’s marriage to Ron was ostensibly peaceable up until Ron’s worldview was co-opted by Dan’s new passion for fundamentalist religion. Once Ron crossed that same line, though, Dianna grew concerned. She already knew – because the Lafferty women knew their place – that she couldn’t safely confront Ron directly, so she appealed for help at least three times that we know of (her letter – written with Brenda’s help – sent to President Kimball, and her two requests for help from her bishop). Those requests fell on deaf ears; the men who were charged with the care of members in their jurisdiction opted instead to protect the church. Church leaders knew what was happening in Ron and Dianna’s home, and sent her back to him repeatedly without any intervention. Finally, when Ron became too dangerous for her to tolerate his insanity any longer, Dianna threw him out, wielding a butcher knife to get his attention. This is what the sins of the fathers can look like.

Sometimes those sins force women to give up everything to keep their children out of harm’s way. Dan’s wife, Matilda, when faced with a literal damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t scenario, appeared to tolerate Dan’s demand that she agree to his “marrying” her daughters, and then she quietly took the necessary steps to get the girls out of reach before he could carry out his plans. It should have been obvious to anyone who cared to observe that Matilda was trapped with no options for getting out, yet those with the power to help her simply looked the other way. Faced with no other options, she helped her daughters, 12 and 14 years old, to flee into the night by unscrewing a bolted window and climbing down from the roof. Who does that? A mother desperate to protect her children does that. Matilda distracted Dan with the only weapon she had available – her own body – so her daughters could get safely away. When the girls ran to the bishop for help, rather than contact state social services, or the local police, he “placed” them with a “fine family” where they apparently did not feel safe; they ran away from the foster family as well. This is what the sins of the fathers can look like.

Who were those young ladies at the farm house, by the way? Three young women [clearly not adults] had been transported from Canada to Utah, presumably intended as wives in arranged marriages to men in Prophet Onias’s group. They were alone, terrified, hungry, and vulnerable. Whatever their family and community of origin, the adults in their lives had not just failed them, but had apparently used them as a marketable commodity. This is what the sins of the fathers can look like.

This takes us to Emma Smith. Emma married Joseph in good faith and supported him in every way possible. She may have been outspoken, but Joseph had her heart and for a long time she had his, until she didn’t. When she dared to challenge him, to voice her objections to being taken for granted, for being expected to roll over for his philandering, Joseph leveraged his power and ambition to try to bring her into submission. Eh. Let’s call it what it was: blackmail. He laid groundwork for the power structure in the church that continues to the present day. He got his minions to apply pressure to Emma to pretend everything was hunky dory at home so he could keep doing whatever he wanted to do without repercussion. And after Joseph was dead, when Emma presumed to suggest that her son – Joseph’s son – should be the next leader of the church, she was shamed and vilified. This is what the sins of the fathers can look like.

Forced to choose between following Brigham Young to Utah or being left behind to fend for herself, Emma chose to stay behind rather than follow a leader she could not endorse, and she was judged apostate because she wouldn’t compromise her beliefs. Apostacy carries the presumption of eternal damnation. This is the threat all Mormon women live under every day, whether they can acknowledge it to themselves or not: do what we tell you, don’t ask questions. Don’t make demands, take it and like it and actively support it, or you’ll be separated from your loved ones in the eternities. Since mortal life for devout Mormon women isn’t all that much fun, the threat of being denied the eternal benefits for which one is enduring to the end is very real. It encourages in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound thinking. What sane person would make a huge investment of time, money, and personal energy in a project only to walk away from it half way through? This is what the sins of the fathers can look like.

If you wonder why so many women uphold patriarchy, maybe this explains it. Couple the threat of eternal damnation with the real-time comfort of a certain amount of soft power, and it’s not hard to see why many women make the choice to participate in their own oppression instead of taking a stand against tyranny at home, at church, and in their communities. They don’t openly fight back because they’ve seen what can happen to women who do.

For those who wonder why so many women today are angry, I say “Behold, Exhibit A: we are the daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of the women who have been abused, vilified, castigated, condemned, commodified, trafficked, gaslighted, beaten, and murdered for as long as patriarchy has been a thing. Our anger seeps from our generational wound. We are trying to heal, to break the cycle, even while the horror continues.

If you’re waiting for me to say something positive about the way misogyny manifests itself in religious life, don’t hold your breath. The story of Jeb Pyre and his faith journey could be more accurately retitled Under the Banner of Patriarchy. If this is what heaven looks like, count me out. It’s looking like Jeb is figuring out that patriarchy hurts everybody. Here’s hoping we real life humans figure that out as well, asap.

If you’re feeling uncomfortable about what UTBOH has to say about patriarchy, especially about Mormon Patriarchy, don’t shoot the messenger; dismantle the system that perpetuates the problem. If you’re not uncomfortable, well, I guess if you want to hang out forever with a petty, bullying, tyrannical, vengeful god, or if you aspire to be one yourself, then count me out. I’ll be hanging with my pals in the lower realms.