Oklahoma Republican files bill to ban 'furries' from school
On Wednesday, Republican state Rep. Justin Humphrey filed HB 3084 in the Oklahoma Legislature. The bill promises to target “Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school.” And while this isn’t an actual thing that’s happened at schools anywhere, Humphrey’s sneering bill would prohibit these imaginary students from “participating in school curriculum or activities; requiring the student's parent or guardian to pick the student up from school; providing for removal of the student by animal control services.”
Humphrey told Rolling Stone that he wrote the bill after hearing “several reports of students disrupting school while engaging in animal-like behavior.” Of course, Humphrey couldn’t cite a single piece of actual evidence because this is a long-debunked right-wing myth passed around by bigoted dunderheads like Rep. Lauren Boebert and media personalities like Joe Rogan, who claimed schools needed to stock kitty litter for children who identified as animals, or “furries.”
In 2022, Tennessee state Sen. Janice Bowling promoted the kitty litter lie during a legislative hearing, saying she heard stories about this kind of thing happening around the state. Her fib was refuted by the Franklin County schools superintendent, who asked Bowling to produce the mythical people she claimed told her it was happening. (Surprise! She did not back up her claims.)
The real origin of the kitty-litter-in-schools mythology is very dark. In fact, it is so dark it reads like a condemnation of right-wing policies.