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.
In 2017, it was reported that schools in Colorado kept kitty litter on hand as an emergency precaution for potential school shooter lockdowns, just in case students could not safely leave their classrooms to use a toilet.
Humphrey explained to Rolling Stone that he had heard all about these issues and asked, “Why are we going to bring in a litterbox and put it in a room? Are they allowing those kids to actually use litterboxes?”
His response to the idea that he’s created a bill based on a nonexistent issue was that “If the reports are as frequent as I have heard, this [bill] feels really good. If they’re not, if it’s just a rare occasion, I think we still need to address it.” Huh?
Of course, creating pointless legislation based on imaginary things seems to be Humphrey’s specialty.
Back in 2021, he made headlines for sponsoring a bill demanding Oklahoma’s Wildlife Conservation Commission establish an official hunting season (with permits and all) for … Bigfoot.
Humphrey also has a history of sponsoring offensive legislation aimed at clawing back reproductive rights. In 2017, he authored HB 1441, which would force women (whom he referred to as “hosts”) seeking an abortion to “be required to provide, in writing, the identity of the father of the fetus to the physician who is to perform or induce the abortion,” and then only allow an abortion to be performed with the “written consent” of the father.
Campaign Action
