Furries pose for photos at Anthrocon 2023, one of the world's largest anthropomorphic conventions celebrating the furry subculture, in which people dress up or roleplay as animal characters, at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 2023. (Photo by AGNES BUN/AFP via Getty Images)
A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma is taking a stand against one of the most pressing issues facing America: furries in schools.
Students who “purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species” or “who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries” will be barred from participating in school activities or curriculum, under legislation introduced by House GOP Rep. Justin Humphrey.
Humphrey also suggests that schools call animal control services “to remove the student,” should their parents be unavailable to collect them.
The long-shot legislation takes the recent furry panic to new heights.
In the last two years, right-wing lawmakers have been gripped by an urban myth claiming that schools were putting litter boxes in their classrooms to accommodate students who identify as cats or other creatures.
In 2022, NBC identified at least 20 conservative candidates and elected officials who repeated that claim, along with conservative influencers including Joe Rogan—despite no evidence that any school, anywhere, had placed litter boxes in their classroom. (Rogan eventually backtracked on his claim).
The only example that NBC found of a classroom stocking kitty litter was in Jefferson County school district in Colorado, where Columbine High School is located. Since 2017, schools in that district stock classrooms with a small amount of cat litter, as part of “go buckets,” to be used in the event of a lockdown during a school shooting.
Furries are not monolithic and contain myriad subcultures that sometimes overlap. There are antifascist furries, furries who like guns, and neo-Nazi furries. There are furries who like to dress up as animals for purely sexual reasons, and furries who dress up as animals because they identify with a particular creature or character from a video game, for example. Teens, particularly queer youth, have also been drawn to the furry community because it’s seen as accepting.
But despite all that, one thing is clear: right-wing conservatives have been absolutely rattled by the mere existence of furries ever since finding out about them. The furry panic was well and truly alive at a convention for the culture warrior group Moms for Liberty last year, according to reporting from The Daily Beast, who reported several attendees spreading rumors that they heard about litter boxes in schools nearby to where they live.
The furry panic is a spinoff from the broader moral panic over LGBTQ-inclusive education, and backlash to growing cultural acceptance for diverse sexual and gender identities.
Last year, six Republican lawmakers in North Dakota introduced House Bill 1522 which, in addition to limiting facilities for trans students, proposed barring schools from adopting policies that would accommodate “a student’s perception of being any animal species other than human.” (The bill passed, minus the language about accommodating furries).
Humphrey, who introduced Oklahoma’s anti-furry legislation, also introduced a separate bill proposing that schools and universities should be barred from using “public funds to promote, encourage or provide instruction on topics related to sexual choice, sexual orientation, drag queens or similar topics.”
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