Blowup over trans teen’s role blows too-sexy ‘Oklahoma!’ off this Texas school stage | Opinion

The Great Gay Panic has arrived in Red River country, where school officials are so fearful over LGBTQ students that they did something really stupid.

Sherman ISD officials canceled the high school musical “Oklahoma!” because girls were playing male roles, and maybe mainly because transgender actor Max Hightower was in a starring role as slick salesman Ali Hakim in the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway hit.

Several girls had been cast to play boys. One girl told Sherman TV station KXII/Channel 12 that the reason was simple: “There’s not enough boys for the show.”

Sherman officials also apparently decided the beloved musical was more prurient than prairie.

In a statement, the district said the play must be recast by gender as called for in the script, and also that “Oklahoma!” is inappropriate for high school drama classes due to mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content.

Apparently the musical also includes way too much butter-churning for Sherman, a city on the edge of north Dallas growth and trying desperately to divert it.

Senior Max Hightower, 17, the student cast as Hakim, has become the star of national TV news stories about the stage fracas.

As his father, Phllip Hightower, told KXAS/Channel 5: “It’s ‘Oklahoma!’ ... It’s not ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ ”

Philip Hightower told Ada-based KTEN/Channel 10, “When they called me, it was, ‘Max isn’t a boy, essentially, so Max can’t have this role.’ “

Max Hightower became a special guest last weekend at an Austin College theater event.

He wasn’t the only “Oklahoma!” cast member booted.

KXII talked with sophomore Natalie Ball, a choral student from the school’s award-winning choirs.

She was smarter than the grownups.

“Clearly they don’t know the first thing about theater,” she said.

There was this guy named Shakespeare.

“Even back when Shakespeare was alive and doing plays, men would play the women,” she said.

The cast members were told by Principal Scott Johnston, she said, and “everybody was just in the hallway sobbing.”

Some parents suspect interference by board President Brad Morgan and Trustee Anna Wylie, a member of the tea-party era Texoma Patriots and one of the protesters at a May 13 Grayson Pride event.

Wylie was photographed with a sign reading, “What are You Confused About?”

As it happens, the board meets Monday night.

Look, the issue of sex and gender in some extracurricular activities is complicated and worth discussion, particularly in sports such as swimming and wrestling.

But there is no issue of sex or gender in theater. This kind of silliness costs conservatives both credibility and elections.

Primitive rules like this are about patriot politics, and stifling resistance, and also about protecting men in an education world increasingly dominated by women.

A good actor is a good actor in any role regardless of gender.

If they’re the best actors, let girls play boys and boys play girls.

I have no idea what Fort Worth’s great actors who started as high school theater students — Taylor Sheridan from Paschal and Tarrant County College comes to mind, or the late Bill Paxton from Aledo and Arlington Heights — would think about a theater class where students are only allowed to play half the roles.

I’ll just point out that even by Texas standards, Weatherford is a pretty darn conservative city.

But in 1975, it put up a statue of homegirl Mary Martin.

She is depicted starring in her 1950s Broadway and TV role as “Peter Pan.”

(Don’t tell Sherman.)