Latest news with #ForbiddingUnlawfulRepresentationofRoleplayinginEducationAct
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas GOP wants to ban kids from playing dress-up: Yes, really
"This whole thing is just weird and, honestly, a little creepy." That comes from a debate in the Texas state legislature that was supposedly about "furries," a subculture of people who dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters. But it wasn't the furries that state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat, was calling creepy. That would be Republican state Rep. Stan Gerdes, author of the FURRIES Act, an embarrassing acronym that unpacks into the "Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act." Gerdes claims to believe that children in elementary schools are "identifying" as animals, and that the schools are indulging this supposedly dangerous delusion by letting kids eat out of dog bowls or use litter boxes instead of regular bathrooms. Absolutely no part of that true, and it is indeed "a little creepy" for Republicans to obsess over an entirely imaginary problem. "Texas schools are for educating kids, not indulging in radical trends," declared Gerdes in an X post announcing the bill, which has the support of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The bill purports to ban "non-human behaviors" in school, a list that includes "using a litter box for the passing of stool," "barking, meowing, hissing, or other animal noises," "licking oneself" and an "outward display" of "features that are non-human." There's also a helpful list of such features, including fake tails, "animal-like" ears and fur, whether fake or real, which could certainly cramp the style of those who enjoy fuzzy outerwear in cold weather. Careful readers may already notice that wearing costumes, which is what Gerdes is trying to describe with this overwrought pseudo-legal language, is not "non-human behavior." Indeed, it is exclusively human behavior. Sure, some folks put little outfits on their pet cats and dogs, but that's not the animal's doing. At least on this planet, only members of homo sapiens are freaky enough to be entertained by a cat dressed as an avocado. I'll note that most cats look annoyed, rather than joyful, when forced to don human-made about this bill is based on false claims and absolute nonsense. Young children are not "identifying" as animals in school. The superintendent of the school that was accused of letting kids use litter boxes told the Houston Chronicle that no such thing was happening, and that she'd made an "extra effort" to investigate classrooms herself. "Furries" are real people, mind you, but they're adults — and they don't "identify" as animals, either. They are hobbyists who enjoy dressing up as cartoon characters and stuffed animals, create elaborate artworks involving anthropomorphic animals and sometimes attend conventions while wearing homemade animal costumes. As for child "furries," that's not a thing because it's both impossible and redundant. Enjoying cartoons, playing games where you sometimes pretend to be an animal and sleeping with your "stuffie" are nearly universal interests for the playground set. "Furries," by definition, are people who still do that stuff after growing up. Yes, some adult furries engage in sexual activity wearing their animal costumes, which is a big part of the moral panic here. But let's get real: Consider the random woman (or man, or whomever) you saw dressed as "sexy cat" last Halloween. None of this, to be clear, is about animals or about the fiction that some people "identify" as animals. This nonsense is ultimately a backdoor assault on the rights of LGBTQ people. For decades, Christian conservatives have been pushing the myth that LGTBQ identities aren't real; they're just a "trend" pushed by nefarious forces onto gullible young people. That narrative isn't applied quite as loudly to gay people in recent years, but the notion that being trans is a "social contagion" has blossomed into a full-blown moral panic, widely accepted by credulous mainstream media, author J.K. Rowling and even the British Supreme Court. The "furry" urban legend just adds more fuel to the fire. The implicit message here is: "We let the kids be trans and now they think they can be animals." It's a reworked version of a scare tactic the right formerly used to demonize same-sex marriage, by claiming it opened the door to human-pet marriage. "They have to create more and more absurd examples in order to keep justifying the oppression," explained Imara Jones, a journalist who founded TransLash Media, which seeks to tell the truth about trans people's lives as a counterweight to nonsense like the "furry" narrative. The far-right's goal is to "eliminate trans people from public life completely," Jones argued, and maybe even to force trans people into institutions. With a goal that extreme, she added, "They have to transform trans people into an extreme threat to themselves and others." Jones compares this to the anti-immigration strategy used by Donald Trump's administration. Both during the campaign and in the White House, Trump and his staff have lied repeatedly about immigrants, claiming they eat pets, they're being used as bioweapons to spread disease, and they are secretly an invading army sent to destroy America. Vice President JD Vance has admitted that these stories are false, claiming that right-wingers are entitled to "create stories" to get the media to "pay attention." As Jones explains it, once the right has transformed all immigrants into "dangerous predators," that creates political justification to "do all sorts of things," including illegally arresting them and sending them to foreign prison camps with no pretense of due process. The "furry" hoax, she suggests, is a "parallel effort" to justify human rights abuses against trans people. So far, Republicans have not tried to use this ginned-up moral panic to arrest trans people en masse, but we're clearly seeing escalating attacks. Trump signed a series of executive orders meant to make it harder for trans people to move about in public, work, get an education or even use a public bathroom. So far, the biggest impact has been in the U.S. military, after the Supreme Court allowed Trump's ban on trans service members to remain in place. The Defense Department wants to discharge more than 4,000 trans service members who have done nothing wrong. Despite their claims to be defending humankind from this imaginary animalistic incursion, Texas Republicans are being deeply anti-human with this "furry" bill. The behaviors that Gerdes' bill seeks to stigmatize are — as any person who has ever met a child or been a child could tell you — entirely normal forms of play. Kids love animals! The love to pretend to be animals, which is why so many children's books, movies, TV shows and toys feature human-like animal characters as often as human ones. Older kids and adults — even those who aren't furries — also love some animal-themed goofing off: Consider the mascots associated wity many college sports teams. Cultures from every corner of the planet have holidays and festivals where people dress up in colorful animal masks or costumes. Gerdes' bill includes some "exceptions" to his draconian ban on this universal human behavior, but those only serve to underscore the bizarre misanthropy of the MAGA movement. Schools are allowed to celebrate Halloween or "school dress-up or activity days" that feature costumes — but only if "there are not more than five such days in a school year." Exceptions are made for school plays and sports mascots. That's it, though. If a group of second-graders want to play "My Little Pony" during recess, or act out an episode of "Paw Patrol," they'd better do it on one of their allotted five days a year! This is an especially ludicrous example of how anti-trans panic serves as a pretext for stripping away creativity and free expression from virtually everybody, regardless of their gender or sexual identity.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The FURRIES Act would ban Texas students from using litter boxes in school. Critics say it targets a problem that doesn't exist.
A new Texas bill is gaining attention for seeking to ban 'animal behavior' in public schools. It's called the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, aka the FURRIES Act — and it seeks to stop students from 'using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.' The bill, named after the 'furry' subculture, which broadly refers to people with a particular interest in animal characters with humanlike qualities, bans dressing up like an animal (such as by wearing tails, collars, ears or leashes) in schools, and bars hissing, meowing and other animallike tendencies. It also prohibits 'surgical' interventions that would make a student appear more animallike. But according to some lawmakers, educators and members of the public, the act is seeking to solve problems that don't actually exist — particularly when it comes to where students are, or are not, using the bathroom. Here's what to know. The FURRIES Act was first introduced on March 13 by Stan Gerdes, a Republican Texas state representative. He claimed that an unspecified 'furry-related incident' happened in the Smithville Independent School District outside of Austin, prompting him to file a formal piece of legislation. That same day, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott referenced the act at the 2025 Texas Pastors Policy Conference in Austin in a speech promoting school choice, where he stated that some students were using litter boxes at school. In a Tuesday hearing about the bill, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat, pushed back and asked Gerdes to confirm the claims that inspired the FURRIES Act. Gerdes was unable to provide specifics. 'This is all part of Abbott's smear campaign against our public schools,' Talarico wrote in a post on X. In fact, none of the claims about litter box usage in schools have ever been verified — and the idea that students are forgoing toilets in favor of cat litter boxes has been debunked time and time again. Rumors about kids using litter boxes in schools have circulated since at least January 2022, per a New York Times article that explained how a Midland County, Mich., school district was accused of supplying feline-friendly accommodations for students before it denied having litter boxes. Meanwhile, in March 2022, Republican Nebraska state Sen. Bruce Bostelman apologized after repeating the debunked rumor — which was circulating in Facebook groups for parents in both Nebraska and Iowa — during a televised debate. But by the fall of 2022, at least 20 conservative candidates and elected officials falsely claimed that year that schools were accommodating students who identified as cats, according to a review by NBC News. That includes New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc, who claimed at a campaign event that students were using litter boxes, as well as exhibiting other animal behaviors like licking one another, at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H. A spokesperson for the school denied this, stating the boxes were used for their pre-veterinary and animal management classes. In October 2022, podcaster Joe Rogan told guest Tulsi Gabbard that his friend's wife 'works at a school that had to install a litter box in the girls' room because there is a girl who was a furry, who identifies as an animal' — further giving fuel to the rumors. But weeks later, Rogan walked back the comments, admitting on his podcast that there 'doesn't seem that there's any proof that they put a litter box in there.' Reuters Fact Check also separately confirmed in October 2022 that there are no schools providing litter boxes for students. And it's not just (not) happening in America, either: In May 2023, CBC reported that a school in Quebec, Canada, also had to debunk its own kitty litter rumor. So far, there is only one piece of evidence that says some schools are supplying kitty litter for student use: Colorado's Jefferson County school district, which includes Columbine High School, previously stated that it keeps litter in classrooms in case students need to relieve themselves during an emergency lockdown. Some people, such as Talarico, a vocal school voucher critic, see the litter box rumors as a way to incite a moral panic where none exists to stoke distrust in public education. Grand Forks, N.D., Superintendent Terry Brenner told Education Week in November 2022 that the kitty litter hoax is part of an agenda 'started by a small minority group and a political wing' who are 'trying to dismantle public education as we know it.' 'By starting all of this disinformation, they can say, 'public schools aren't the answer,'' he explained. ''Students aren't achieving academically, socially, behaviorally, or emotionally. So, let's get the voucher system going.'' President Trump has made it a mission to radically change education in the United States, indicating his intent to dismantle the Department of Education earlier this year. Some critics of that plan say that doing so will give more power to private and religious institutions, furthering the class and education divide. The litter box rumors also come amid another ongoing bathroom battle in public schools over the rights of trans students to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. Scott Ellis, executive director of Great Lakes Bay Pride, which services the Midland LGBTQ community in Michigan, spoke to Michigan Advance in February 2022 about the ways in which the litter box panic harms children. 'We've gotten to a place where in order to put down those who are either exploring their gender identity or identify maybe differently than their sex assigned at birth, we start equating these things — like in this particular case, 'furries' being a role-play versus somebody's identity,' he said. 'Those are not the same thing.' While furries are not inherently a part of the LGBTQ community, despite common misconception, self-described 'gay furries' did take credit for hacking into anti-trans government websites in 2023.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The FURRIES Act would ban Texas students from using litter boxes in school. Critics say it targets a problem that doesn't exist.
A new Texas bill is gaining attention for seeking to ban 'animal behavior' in public schools. It's called the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, aka the FURRIES Act — and it seeks to stop students from 'using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.' The bill, named after the 'furry' subculture, which broadly refers to people with a particular interest in animal characters with humanlike qualities, bans dressing up like an animal (such as by wearing tails, collars, ears or leashes) in schools, and bars hissing, meowing and other animallike tendencies. It also prohibits 'surgical' interventions that would make a student appear more animallike. But according to some lawmakers, educators and members of the public, the act is seeking to solve problems that don't actually exist — particularly when it comes to where students are, or are not, using the bathroom. Here's what to know. The FURRIES Act was first introduced on March 13 by Stan Gerdes, a Republican Texas state representative. He claimed that an unspecified 'furry-related incident' happened in the Smithville Independent School District outside of Austin, prompting him to file a formal piece of legislation. That same day, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott referenced the act at the 2025 Texas Pastors Policy Conference in Austin in a speech promoting school choice, where he stated that some students were using litter boxes at school. In a Tuesday hearing about the bill, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat, pushed back and asked Gerdes to confirm the claims that inspired the FURRIES Act. Gerdes was unable to provide specifics. 'This is all part of Abbott's smear campaign against our public schools,' Talarico wrote in a post on X. In fact, none of the claims about litter box usage in schools have ever been verified — and the idea that students are forgoing toilets in favor of cat litter boxes has been debunked time and time again. Rumors about kids using litter boxes in schools have circulated since at least January 2022, per a New York Times article that explained how a Midland County, Mich., school district was accused of supplying feline-friendly accommodations for students before it denied having litter boxes. Meanwhile, in March 2022, Republican Nebraska state Sen. Bruce Bostelman apologized after repeating the debunked rumor — which was circulating in Facebook groups for parents in both Nebraska and Iowa — during a televised debate. But by the fall of 2022, at least 20 conservative candidates and elected officials falsely claimed that year that schools were accommodating students who identified as cats, according to a review by NBC News. That includes New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc, who claimed at a campaign event that students were using litter boxes, as well as exhibiting other animal behaviors like licking one another, at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H. A spokesperson for the school denied this, stating the boxes were used for their pre-veterinary and animal management classes. In October 2022, podcaster Joe Rogan told guest Tulsi Gabbard that his friend's wife 'works at a school that had to install a litter box in the girls' room because there is a girl who was a furry, who identifies as an animal' — further giving fuel to the rumors. But weeks later, Rogan walked back the comments, admitting on his podcast that there 'doesn't seem that there's any proof that they put a litter box in there.' Reuters Fact Check also separately confirmed in October 2022 that there are no schools providing litter boxes for students. And it's not just (not) happening in America, either: In May 2023, CBC reported that a school in Quebec, Canada, also had to debunk its own kitty litter rumor. So far, there is only one piece of evidence that says some schools are supplying kitty litter for student use: Colorado's Jefferson County school district, which includes Columbine High School, previously stated that it keeps litter in classrooms in case students need to relieve themselves during an emergency lockdown. Some people, such as Talarico, a vocal school voucher critic, see the litter box rumors as a way to incite a moral panic where none exists to stoke distrust in public education. Grand Forks, N.D., Superintendent Terry Brenner told Education Week in November 2022 that the kitty litter hoax is part of an agenda 'started by a small minority group and a political wing' who are 'trying to dismantle public education as we know it.' 'By starting all of this disinformation, they can say, 'public schools aren't the answer,'' he explained. ''Students aren't achieving academically, socially, behaviorally, or emotionally. So, let's get the voucher system going.'' President Trump has made it a mission to radically change education in the United States, indicating his intent to dismantle the Department of Education earlier this year. Some critics of that plan say that doing so will give more power to private and religious institutions, furthering the class and education divide. The litter box rumors also come amid another ongoing bathroom battle in public schools over the rights of trans students to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. Scott Ellis, executive director of Great Lakes Bay Pride, which services the Midland LGBTQ community in Michigan, spoke to Michigan Advance in February 2022 about the ways in which the litter box panic harms children. 'We've gotten to a place where in order to put down those who are either exploring their gender identity or identify maybe differently than their sex assigned at birth, we start equating these things — like in this particular case, 'furries' being a role-play versus somebody's identity,' he said. 'Those are not the same thing.' While furries are not inherently a part of the LGBTQ community, despite common misconception, self-described 'gay furries' did take credit for hacking into anti-trans government websites in 2023.
