Although the tide has turned decidedly against sex changes for minors nationally, a library in suburban Kansas City is hosting “A Celebration of Trans Stories” for kids later this month.
The “National Day of Reading” event sponsored by JoCo Pride will be from 4 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. Feb. 28 at the Johnson County Library’s Lenexa City Center branch.
“Younger kids’ books at 4:00 and 5:00,” the event notice proclaims. “Community and Connection for All Ages Throughout.”
The notice includes images of two children’s book covers with trans themes:
Kapaemahu, a picture book, tells “an Indigenous legend about how four extraordinary individuals of dual male and female spirit, or Mahu, brought healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii.”
I Am Jazz tells “the story of a transgender child based on the real-life experience of Jazz Jennings, who has become a spokesperson for transkids everywhere.”
Jennings, one of the book’s co-authors, is described as a YouTube personality, LGBT activist and “one of the youngest publicly documented people to be identified as transgender.”
“Jazz tells readers that she was born transgender,” reads a review at SocialJusticeBooks.org, “which to her means having a girl brain in a boy body. For Jazz, it always seemed like she was a boy doing girl stuff or a boy dressing in girls clothes, but really she was simply expressing her gender in the most authentic way it felt to her.”
While Kansas is considered a red state, its Democrat governor, Laura Kelly, last week vetoed a bill that would ban sex-change treatments for minors. And while the state legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, liberals dominate the Johnson County Commission and the library board.
Moreover, Johnson County, the state’s most populous county, voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 – and is one of the few counties in America where Trump failed to gain ground from 2020.
What’s happening in Kansas’ biggest county stands in stark contrast to what’s happening nationally – including President Trump’s executive order last month pulling federal funds for “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children.
Charlotte O’Hara, a conservative former county commissioner, said she believes the library’s event is part of a “global strategy and will include all levels of government, not just the library.
“My opinion is the liberals are doubling down on DEI in hopes of drawing fire from the Trump administration. Federal funds taken or not renewed will be the battle cry of the Democrats in their counterattack against the sanity President Trump is bringing to the public sphere.
“Democrats using children in their desperate attempt to find political advantage is beyond disgusting.”
Erika Sheets, chair of the county’s Moms for Liberty chapter, said such indoctrination is even worse in the schools than at the public library.
“For an event such as JoCo Pride Reading Day at a public library, at least parents are informed about what their children would be exposed to, unlike in schools,” she said in a statement to The Heartlander. “And parents would have a choice for their children to attend or not, unlike schools.”
The Heartlander reached out to the Johnson County Library for comment about the appropriateness of the event and whether the library board had approved it.
“The organization booked a meeting room at the Library in accordance with our Meeting Rooms policy which can be found on our website, at this link,” a spokesperson wrote back. “We do not have any details beyond those provided by the organizers of the event.”
