Nashville-area school district votes to remove children's transgender book after fiery board meeting

A Nashville-area school district voted this week to remove a transgender book for children from its school libraries after questions were raised about the book's content at last month's board meeting.

During the public comment section at the December 10 Murfreesboro City School Board meeting, pastor and activist John K. Amanchukwu called out the district for having the picture book, "It Feels Good to Be Yourself," on the shelves at Bradley Academy, an elementary school serving pre-K through 6th grade students in the district.

The book introduces the concept of gender identity to readers as young as four, according to its description. 

"Some people are boys. Some people are girls. Some people are both, neither, or somewhere in between," it says.

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The book tells the story of "Ruthie," a transgender girl, and introduces terms like "cisgender" and "nonbinary" to explain different gender identities to younger readers.

After Amanchukwu started to read from the book, board chair Butch Campbell objected to the pastor bringing up the book at the meeting, saying he was going against the rules of only bringing up agenda items during the public comment section.

The pastor continued to read from inside the book, calling the book's message about there being more than two genders "a lie" and citing the Book of Genesis.

After about two minutes of the board attempting to get Amanchukwu to stop speaking, they forced the meeting into a recess.

At the January 14 school board meeting this week, the board announced the transgender-themed book had been reviewed by a committee of staff and parents, who recommended removing the book. 

One board member said the book had been on the shelves since 2022 and had never been checked out.

Before they conducted a vote, vice-chair Amanda Moore accused Amanchukwu of conducting a "show" to bring the book to the district's attention.

Amanchukwu is a contributor for Turning Point USA and travels around the country to different school board meetings to draw attention to explicit books in school libraries.

"This person had advertised his visit to us for weeks before he came. Never contacted the school, never contacted central office and never contacted this board, even though he came and yelled at us about this dangerous book we had on the shelf," vice chair Amanda Moore said before the board voted to remove the book from library shelves.

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Amanchukwu responded to the board's decision and comments in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"If my commitment to protecting children from content that mentally rapes them is a 'show'....I  pray that this ‘show’ gets bigger for the sake of the least of these, in 2025," Amanchukwu said.

He quoted Proverbs 22:6, which says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

"We are called to train children up, not mess them up," his statement continued. "I salute the board members for using common sense in governing the pedagogy of students in Murfreesboro City Schools." 

This month, a school district in Minnesota removed a transgender book from an elementary school library after facing pressure from a concerned parent.

Rochester Public Schools said it pulled the 2022 book, "The Rainbow Parade" by Emily Neilson, from its elementary school media center last month after a Franklin Elementary School parent raised concerns about nude illustrations in the book.