Conspiracies About Furries in Schools Got Laughs. The Texas Lege Is Taking Them Dead Seriously.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-schools-anti-furries-legislation/

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https://archive.li/laTSX

As much of the state slept on Tuesday night, some Texas lawmakers were working late, pondering such weighty questions as: If you lick Cheeto dust off your fingers and someone sees you, is it possible they could assume you’re actually pretending to be a cat?

A strange query, sure. But given the potential consequences posed by the bill being heard, Representative James Talarico, a Democrat from Austin, felt it was worth discussing. If the answer is yes—if the act of tonguing your thumb clean of that last bit of Flamin’ Hot residue bares even a slight resemblance to how a feline grooms itself—then it is theoretically possible that someone might not see the cheddar on your hands and might thus confuse your finger licking with a sincere desire to live your life as a cat. And if you’re a Texas public school student, such a mishap could soon cause very real problems for you, your teacher, or your school.

The bizarre back-and-forth came just before midnight on Tuesday as the Texas House’s education committee debated legislation that would ban Texas public school students from engaging in what the bill’s author, Republican Representative Stan Gerdes, of Smithville, has deemed “non-human” behavior while on campus. Among the potentially forbidden behaviors: barking, meowing, wearing a leash, licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming, and wearing a fur suit or anything else that is inconsistent with “behaviors or accessories typically displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,” according to the bill.

Named the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. (Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education) Act, Gerdes’s bill aims to excise “furries”—the name typically ascribed to members of a subculture who don large, anthropomorphic costumes matching animal alter egos—from Texas public schools. The bill also bans students from using litter boxes instead of bathrooms. It’s the latest response to a conservative panic over a wave of hoaxes and debunked viral posts that claim schoolkids across America are choosing to identify as animals and that some school administrators are either turning a blind eye or actively aiding and encouraging the behavior. Governor Greg Abbott, who endorsed Gerdes’s bill, has himself helped spread these rumors: At a stop on his statewide tour promoting school-voucher legislation earlier this year, he told a group of pastors that in some parts of the state, “kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms.”

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