A protest was held Tuesday after a school district in North Carolina created a “gender unicorn” to teach staff and faculty about gender identity, gender expression and transgenderism.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), a school district in Charlotte, N.C., created a purple unicorn with two hearts to explain transgenderism in training materials for school staff, reports WCNC. The school district will use the training materials to teach staff and faculty how to best help transgender students.

The North Carolina Values Coalition led a protest against CMS’ plans to let transgender students use the pronouns, name and bathroom according to their gender identity. Speakers at the protest said that new CMS policy infringes on student privacy.

“It was really slick. It is friendly looking and deceitful because that unicorn, to me, represents the religion of sex. It is silencing and penalizing those of us who believe we were created male and female and should be able to use those terms,” Donica Hudson, a mother of two students, told WCNC.

Another mother told WCNC that she felt the new training materials threatened her children’s right to free speech.

“I think they should use something else and they should educate teachers on things that are really important that protect the rights of speech and rights of our students,” Lori Dale said to WCNC.

Members of the school board say that they have received a slew of emails after the Values Coalition started a letter campaign to protest CMS’ new policy.

“There’s advocacy that’s effective and there’s advocacy that’s just not. To me that’s just spam email,” said Rhonda Lennon, a Republican board member.

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