To the legions of sparrows shot with cannons or tempests brewed in a teapot, we add another: a high school play canceled because a girl won a role playing a boy.
Once upon a time, this would have been a local matter settled with local standards and maybe a blurb in the student paper. Those times are long gone in an era when everything can be ammunition in the culture war and its social media amplifiers. And now, it’s a question of murky state law that has everyone acting from a place of fear.
GPISD school board president Emily Liles said the district made the decision to comply with Senate Bill 12, a 2025 law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools.
The connection between the provisions of SB 12 and the need to cancel this play strikes us as weak. Still, we sympathize with a school district scared of the state.
A district spokesperson told us that if even one parent was offended by the content of the musical and complained to the state, GPISD could face serious consequences.
“Depending on … whether or not they want to make an example of us, they could come in and say, ‘you know what, maybe we want to take over your district,’” the spokesman said.
It’s not crazy to fear such consequences. And there appears to have been some confusion about just how this play would play out. The district told us it would have involved a kiss between the two main characters, both played by female students. That surely would have stirred complaints.
But our newsroom reported that the school’s adaptation planned to scrap that scene. The district said that may have been discussed at the campus level, but no formal plan was ever in place.
The district didn’t have good options. It could risk wrath from the likes of Attorney General Ken Paxton or Gov. Greg Abbott or face backlash from a community that felt this went too far. GPISD has had “two weeks of a lot of profanity and a lot of death threats,” the spokesman said. The district suspects much of this did not originate locally. That seems certain. Social media is where this stuff draws breath.
There are real questions here that deserve to be weighed. How a community considers what’s appropriate for kids is fair. A girl who happens to land the part of a boy in the school play is on the innocent side of cultural concerns.
But we can’t say no one would have been hurt had the play gone forward. State law, it seems, has determined someone might be.