otherkinnews | Apr. 26th, 2025

This blog post was written by Orion Scribner (frameacloud) on 2025 April 26 for Otherkin News, which is a volunteer run project. We welcome other people to submit articles about alterhumanity in current events. Learn more about this project and what we’re looking for.

An anti-furry bill will be heard early this week

Texas House Bill 54, which nicknames itself the "F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act," has been scheduled for a public hearing on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, at 8:00 AM (Texas Legislature). This is a very early stage in the bill's progress toward becoming a law: it is not yet a law, and this hearing alone is not enough to make it become a law. Eighteen other bills about public education that will be heard during that session as well. Don't let the sensationalism of this bill distract you from the others: sometimes legislators intentionally write outrageous bills not only to satirize the issues they genuinely care about, but to distract attention away from other bills that they hope will pass into law unnoticed (Jones 2024). The government web page at the first link tells where people can submit comment or testify, where to see a live video broadcast of it. Common wisdom in the furry fandom warns to take caution in talking with the media or bringing other forms of publicity. Be aware that the bill author had said that he "expect[s] the subculture to show up in full furry vengeance at the committee hearing" (Bahari 2025). This suggests that he is looking forward to it being bait for an embarrassing spectacle.

Here's a recap of this bill and the urban legend behind it

In March, Republican Representative Stan Gerdes filed Texas House Bill 54 (TX HB 54, formerly TX HB 4814). Here is the state government's page about the bill, and here is their text of the bill itself. Calling itself the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act, the bill proposes an amendment to the state constitution to ban public schools from allowing students to do anything on its list of "non-human behaviors." The bill would impose tens of thousands of dollars of fines on faculty for allowing those behaviors, section 6(f), found on page 10. It would redefine abuse to include letting children think that those behaviors are societally acceptable, section 5(1)(A), found on page 7. Gerdes claimed he wrote the bill in response to an incident in the school district of Smithville, which is 45 miles away from Austin and has only 1,885 students. He didn't describe the incident, and journalists found no sign of it there (Bahari 2025; Villarreal 2025). The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, publicly spoke in favor of this particular bill, saying that these non-human behaviors were one of his reasons to take government funds away from public schools, using the money for some parents to send their children to private schools instead (Wermund 2025; Wermund and McKinley 2025).

Some of the activities described in the bill never happened in real life. For example, it forbids children from getting surgeries to make themselves look like animals, or using litter boxes in school, in section 2(a)(6), found on pages 5 through 6. It's the eleventh bill that Republicans in the US have sponsored in the past three years based on the litter box urban legend (Scribner 2025 March 18). The legend has been debunked by Reuters Fact Check, PolitiFact, and Snopes (Reuters, 2022; Czopek, 2022; Palma, 2023). Invented and popularized by Republican politicians and public figures in 2021, the urban legend says that public schools in the US have been providing litter boxes for students who identify as animals, which it calls furries. Journalists confirmed that has never happened. Only one district-- that of Columbine High School-- had litter in its emergency supplies for if classrooms were locked down without restroom access for many hours during a school shooting, along with other last-resort options for maintaining some rudiments of cleanliness and dignity while surviving unimaginable conditions (Kingkade et al 2022). That had some media attention in 2017 (Garcia 2017). In real life, use of litter boxes is not characteristic of the furry fandom. Nor do furries typically identify as animals (Plante et al, 2016, pp. 113-114). It has been decades that sexists have made grotesque comparisons between transgender restroom access and animal-people demanding to use something other than toilets, but it is no coincidence that the change from joke to urban legend happened after the 2020 Supreme Court decision G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board in favor of transgender-friendly restroom policies in high schools.

Why are Republicans doing this?

There are a variety of reasons why Republicans are spreading urban legend and why they're proposing laws based on it. The purpose of the urban legend and the bills is to satirize transgender students who ask to use the right restrooms for their genders. Another of its purposes is to justify defunding public schools in favor of private schools. Defunding public schools would make it impossible for some children with severe disabilities to go to school at all (RA Staff 2025 March 6).

Though the bill specifically names some activities that no students have done, it has other aspects that are worded so broadly that it would also apply to a range of behaviors that are normal in children's pretend play, teacher-guided learning activities, and hobby clubs (Codega 2025; Fields 2025). Most children play at being animals or engage in some form of what could be considered role-play as part of education or entertainment. Do Republicans have a vendetta against that, and if so, why? For one thing, fascism and other very controlling government ideologies disapprove of play. Controlling ideologies misinterpret play as only a distraction and diversion. There is little care for its importance for development, learning, discovery, and enrichment. Instead, fascists prioritize molding youth to conformity and obedience in utilitarian purposes in war, labor, and reproduction, with scarcely any life outside of it. Any hobby not in service to the structure is seen as a threat to it, because exploring outside of or making exceptions to the paradigm may lead to questioning it. Instead of approaching unfamiliar ideas with curiosity, thinking is fended off by means of shallow yet emotionally sensational reactions of either derision or outrage.

For another thing, sexists try to misrepresent transgender people as playing make-believe, saying that a transgender child is no different than a child pretending to be an animal one afternoon on the playground. Sexists say that gender confusion is a temporary phase that people shouldn't be encouraged in, should grow out of, or be forced out of by conversion therapy, rather than being allowed to socially transition. This is contrary to everything science knows about transgender people. Transgender people are who they say they are, allowing them to be themselves saves their lives, and obstructing that is needlessly destructive to their survival. The council of the world's largest psychological association overwhelmingly decided for a policy that supports transition as medically necessary and the healthiest choice for transgender people of all ages who desire it (APA Council of Representatives 2024). It also has a policy that recognizes conversion therapy as abusive and ineffective (APA Council of Representatives 2021).

In their urban legend and anti-furry bills and what they use them to justify, we see many values of what now calls itself the American Republican party. Republicans such as Governor Abbott show us that they oppose education for people other than the wealthy. Republicans are against the survival of youth who are different because of being queer, disabled, or other reasons. They oppose young people engaging in hobbies or playtime. If any of this situation feels undesirable or discouraging to you, the end of one of my previous articles about this bill has a section about what you can do to make positive changes to the world around you. There will be an opportunity to speak up about this bill this week. If you do, please make sure you are well-informed and careful.∎

Previously...
Here is a list in reverse chronological order of some of our previous posts on Otherkin News about TX HB 54 and other anti-furry bills in the US:

* 2025 April 19, our second article about TX HB 54: A Roundup of News Coverage of Texas’s F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act.
* 2025 March 18, our first article about TX HB 54: Texas Governor Wants Constitutional Amendment to Punish “Non-Human Behaviors” in Schools
* 2025 January 18: Mississippi and Oklahoma propose laws against students who identify as nonhuman animals
* 2024 March 24: One anti-furry bill died, the other two wait to be heard
* 2024 February 25: One of the anti-furry bills might become about religion in schools instead
* 2024 February 18: Republicans introduce a 7th anti-furry bill and work to undermine student freedoms on a wider scale
* 2024 February 9: Will Oklahoma Call Animal Control on Students?
* 2023 April 24: Proposed amendment to Montana net censorship bill would ban transgender and transspecies people
* 2023 March 14: A formerly anti-alterhuman but still anti-transgender bill will be heard Wednesday
* 2023 February 22: In US, three anti-transgender bills also oppose alterhumans; similar recent Supreme Court cases

Otherkin News

News for all sorts of alterhumans

Apr. 26th, 2025

Apr. 26th, 2025

Texas's F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Bill Scheduled for Hearing Tuesday Morning

Profile

About

Links

May 2025

Most Popular Tags