Well, we’ve done it again, Texas. Added yet another deeply embarrassing chapter to our ever-growing “Are We the Problem?” scrapbook. This time, it involves a doomed piece of legislation so absurd, so disconnected from reality, you’d think it was cooked up in an internet comment section. But no — it had the official backing of Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows.
The now-limping F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act — that’s short for “Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education” — was supposed to crack down on the nonexistent crisis of teens pretending to be animals in schools. That’s right. Your state government used time, energy, and taxpayer dollars to try to stop students from wearing cat ears or making animal noises. Because apparently, nothing screams “priority” like imaginary werewolves in homeroom.
The bill, authored by Rep. Stan Gerdes, aimed to outlaw “non-human behavior” in schools — which is ironic, given how little human behavior seems to be present in our beloved Capitol. Gerdes claimed the legislation was necessary to stop a “concerning trend,” though when pressed for actual proof, he came up with the legislative equivalent of a shrug emoji.
At a committee hearing last month, Gerdes cited a conversation with a school superintendent who denied there was a problem, according to the Houston Chronicle. No reports. No examples. Just vibes and viral Facebook posts from 2022.
Abbott, never one to let facts get in the way of a good culture war, declared to a group of pastors in March that “kids in two rural school district settings go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms.”
Of course, he offered no evidence either — just a healthy dose of moral panic (and, of course, utter contempt for the intelligence of the residents of his state).
Thankfully, reality stepped in. Because most people, even the most MAGA among us, don’t really believe that their kids’ schools have been turned into episodes of “Paw Patrol.”
The inane bill failed to advance out of the House education committee before Monday’s deadline, per the Chronicle, meaning it’s likely dead for the session. Gerdes vowed to continue fighting the phantom furry menace, saying there are “potentially” other ways to revive it before June, but that sounds a lot like someone insisting they’re “taking a break” instead of admitting they got dumped.
Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat from Round Rock and one of the few adults in the room, called the bill out for what it is: a made-up distraction meant to turn Texans against their public schools.
“Governor Abbott has used this litter box rumor to paint our schools in the worst possible light,” Talarico said during the hearing last month. “That’s because if you want to defund neighborhood schools across the state, you have to get Texans to turn against their public schools. So you call librarians groomers, you accuse teachers of indoctrination, and now you say that schools are providing litter boxes to students. That’s how all of this is tied together.”
And about those infamous litter boxes? Let’s put that nonsense to rest, too. The idea that schools are installing litter boxes in bathrooms for “furry-identifying” students was never real to begin with. It’s the Bigfoot of culture war talking points — and just as hard to pin down.
According to a Reuters fact check, the claim was amplified in right-wing doofus Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a Woman?,” where a family therapist declared that kids were “purring” in classrooms and teachers weren’t allowed to question it because it’s supposedly a queer identity. Sounds compelling — until you realize no evidence was ever offered, and every actual expert who studies this stuff says it’s absolute fiction.
Reuters talked to Courtney Plante, co-founder of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (aka Furscience), which has studied over 40,000 furries and confirmed that the whole “kids acting like cats in schools” hysteria has been floating around the internet for over a decade, with no proof, of course. “If there is an epidemic of kids howling and meowing in schools,” Plante told Reuters, “you’d think it would be easier to find them and put them in front of a camera (or at very least, one of their teachers!).”
Psychologist Dr. Kathy Gerbasi and professors like Elizabeth Fein agree: while some adults who identify as “therians” feel a spiritual or psychological connection to animals, they’re not disrupting classrooms, and they certainly aren’t being granted protected legal status. Harvard professor Michael Bronski flat-out said the whole idea that identifying as a cat is a protected queer identity is “completely a fabrication.”
In short: no litter boxes. No cat children. No classroom zoos. Just a bunch of grown adults chasing internet rumors like they’re legislative priorities.
So let’s recap: A major state political party, including our actual governor, tried to pass a law banning students from pretending to be animals based on online hearsay that has been debunked more times than JFK Jr.’s return to Dealey Plaza. And they failed. And in a legislative session as supremely messed-up as this one, this sadly counts as a victory.
We could’ve been talking about school funding. Teacher pay. Student mental health. But instead, we got a fur-fueled sideshow that now joins the long, sad parade of political theater that makes Texas the punchline of its own joke.
At least this time, the joke didn’t become law.