For months, students in the Watertown High School Wind Symphony rehearsed Omar Thomas’ “A Mother of a Revolution,” a challenging contemporary piece inspired by the legacy of transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson. Then, just days before their May 18 spring concert, the Watertown School Board met to discuss the possibility of removing the piece from the concert because of its connection to LGBTQ+ history.

The composition contains no lyrics. It is a musically complex, challenging, and beautiful piece. The controversy stems entirely from the inspiration behind its origins.

Across Wisconsin and the country, LGBTQ+ people are increasingly being treated as subjects too “controversial” for public life. In Watertown, that logic has now reached high school band concerts, and students who spent a year preparing music have suddenly found themselves caught in a political battle over whether simply acknowledging queer history is acceptable in a public school setting.

The message this sends to LGBTQ+ students is unmistakable: your existence is debatable, your history is dangerous, and even indirect references to your community can be deemed inappropriate.

According to reporting from Wisconsin Public Radio and TMJ4, band director Reid LaDew followed district policy by informing parents months in advance about the piece and allowing students to opt out. Only one student ultimately chose not to perform it. Yet board members still argued the work should potentially be pulled because of its association with Johnson and the Stonewall uprising.

One student, Sophia Anderson, told TMJ4 she was “devastated” by the possibility the performance could be canceled. Her reaction reflects a broader reality for many queer young people in Wisconsin schools right now. Increasingly, they are watching adults frame LGBTQ+ identity as inherently political or inappropriate, even when presented through art, history, or basic acknowledgment.

And this rhetoric does not stay confined to school board meetings, either. In fact, when public officials describe LGBTQ+ topics as threats requiring censorship, it legitimizes hostility far beyond the classroom. It encourages the idea that queer people should be hidden from public view, and it reinforces the false belief that LGBTQ+ inclusion (and even basic acknowledgement) somehow harms children. In reality, what harms students is the constant suggestion that some people’s identities are too offensive to mention.

The damage also extends to the broader community. Public education is supposed to expose students to history, culture, and artistic expression, and including subjects in a student’s education that may challenge them to consider perspectives and histories they are unfamiliar with to get them to think critically is what ultimately leads them to expand their ability to learn. Once school boards begin banning material because someone objects to its perceived ideological associations, there is no clear stopping point.

Music tied to civil rights history today could become books, plays, or historical lessons tomorrow.

Ironically, many of the same political voices advocating these removals frequently frame themselves as defenders of free speech. But free speech cannot survive if public institutions begin erasing artistic works simply because they acknowledge marginalized people. A school concert is not government indoctrination. A musical composition inspired by queer history is not coercion. And students learning about the existence of LGBTQ+ people is not a threat.

Former Watertown band director DeWayne Roberson told WPR that critics were acting out of “ignorance” and allowing current political rhetoric to shape educational decisions. He is far from alone in that concern.

The Watertown controversy may seem small to outsiders: a single song at a single concert in a single Wisconsin city. But these moments accumulate. They shape whether queer young people feel safe participating in public life. They influence whether teachers fear introducing diverse material. And they determine whether schools remain places of learning or become battlegrounds where any mention of queer existence triggers outrage.

At its core, this debate isn’t actually really about music, just like the debate about Critical Race Theory in schools isn’t about race. We know this. It’s about whether LGBTQ+ people are allowed to exist openly in American cultural life without being labeled as controversial.

That should concern everyone, regardless of politics.