Questions, answered directly.

Are you trying to ban the Bible?

No. I would not want any book removed from any library, including the King James Bible. The catalog is an analytical exercise, not a recommendation. It demonstrates what the Age-Appropriate Materials Act’s own standards produce when applied evenhandedly to a widely-recognized text. The purpose is to expose that the standard is not being applied evenhandedly — not to expand the harm.

Aren’t you cherry-picking verses out of context?

No. The catalog uses strict, documented operational definitions, applies them uniformly to all 31,102 verses of the KJV, excludes documented categories of false positives, and discloses every passage in full so any reader can verify the context. The full methodology is published. Anyone is welcome to scrutinize, dispute, or replicate the work.

Crucially, the catalog applies the same standard the Knox County school district used to remove Roots: a passage-level analysis where any qualifying passage triggers review. The district did not consider the context of Roots’s 729 pages or its Pulitzer Prize. It considered “a passage in chapter 84.” The catalog uses that same passage-level framework, applied evenhandedly.

But the Bible has tremendous literary and historical value. Doesn’t that change things?

Yes. It absolutely does. That is the point. So does Roots. So does Slaughterhouse-Five. So does Maus. So do most of the 124 books on the Knox County Schools banned list. The literary and historical value of a book is precisely what should govern whether it stays on a library shelf — not a mechanical count of passages flagged under a vague statute.

The 2024 amendment of the AAMA stripped out the literary-value safety valve that the original 2022 law contained, which is part of why books with obvious literary value are now being removed. If literary value is what saves the Bible from the AAMA, then literary value should save Roots too. Either both protections exist, or neither does.

Are you a Christian? An atheist? What’s your religious background?

It does not matter. The catalog stands or falls on the accuracy of its source text and the consistency of its method, not on the personal beliefs of its author. The KJV is the KJV regardless of who is reading it. If you want to know whether a particular passage I’ve flagged actually contains the content I’ve described, you can open the Bible and check.

Do you have children in Knox County Schools?

No. I do not currently have any children enrolled in Knox County Schools. This means I am not eligible to file a formal challenge under the AAMA’s feedback procedure, which is limited to students, parents of students, and school employees. This project is therefore a public-record and civic-research project rather than a procedural filing.

Are you affiliated with a political party, candidate, organization, or campaign?

No. This project is published under my own name, on my own time, with my own resources. There is no organization behind it, no funding behind it, and no candidate I am promoting. I am a private citizen with a personal conviction that the books being removed from my county’s schools should not be removed. The catalog is what I built to make that case rigorously.

Why now?

On May 14, 2026, Knox County Schools removed Roots from its library collection. Roots is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by an author who lived and died in East Tennessee and who is honored with a thirteen-foot bronze statue in Knoxville. The decision crystallized something that had been accumulating across many earlier removals: that this law is not a neutral protection of children. It is a selective culling of certain kinds of books and certain kinds of stories. Now seemed the moment when documentation might matter.

What do you want to happen as a result of this catalog?

Several things. I would like the catalog to be useful to journalists writing about the AAMA. I would like it to be useful to school librarians and teachers defending their collections. I would like it to be useful to attorneys evaluating whether the inconsistent application of the law provides constitutional grounds for challenge. I would like it to be useful to legislators of any party who are reconsidering the 2024 amendment. And I would like the dozens of books removed under the AAMA from school libraries across Tennessee — Roots and Slaughterhouse-Five in Knox County, Maus in McMinn County, and many others — restored to the shelves.

I do not want the Bible removed from anywhere. The catalog is an argument for restoration, not for further removal.

Why did you choose the King James Version specifically?

For one reason: the KJV is in the public domain, freely available as machine-readable text, and the most widely recognized English-language Bible in the cultural and legal traditions of the United States. The choice was practical, not theological. The same exercise could be performed on any modern translation and would yield substantively similar results, because the underlying content is the same.

Is this legal advice? Can I cite it in a court filing?

I am not a lawyer, and nothing on this site is legal advice. The catalog is an analytical record — not legal opinion, not theological argument, not policy recommendation. Attorneys evaluating the AAMA for constitutional challenge are free to cite this record if they find it useful, but the legal analysis of those citations is a job for licensed counsel.

Can I republish, reproduce, or use this catalog?

Yes. The catalog is released for free redistribution and reproduction with attribution to Stacey Kilgore and a link to this site. The underlying KJV text is public domain. The PDF, XLSX, and HTML versions are all available on the downloads page. Journalists, teachers, librarians, attorneys, clergy, and members of the public are welcome to use this material however they find useful.

I found an error. What do I do?

Please write to the address on the press page. Errors will be corrected openly and on the record. If a passage is misidentified, mistagged, or missing, I want to know.

Will you do an interview? Speak at an event? Talk to my book club?

Probably yes — I am happy to discuss the project with journalists, researchers, school librarians, teachers, parents, board members, attorneys, clergy, and community groups. Please reach out through the press page and we can find a time.