Humphrey's bill, House Bill 3084, would ban "students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school" from participating in class and school activities.
This is, hands down, the worst description of furries I have ever read in my entire life.
Hell, it sounds like something Kindergarteners have been doing since forever.
So what I'm hearing is if I tell the teacher I'm a platypus I don't have to go to class?
Guaranteed if this law got passed there would be a high school somewhere where the entire student body shows up wearing cat ears.
Ironically also means that it basically wouldn't apply to anyone unless that person specifically wants it to. Performative outrage bill.
anthropomorphic behavior
Anyone else morbidly curious about what happens if they don't fix the bill's wording and accidentally ban "human-shaped behavior" at school?
SSSHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
How ironic. By trying to make people not act like animals, they force everyone to behave like animals.
Oklahoma conservatives vs word with more than 3 syllables challenge, who will win?
For the love of god, please don't. You're just making them hornier.
I've got to admit that Republicans are always finding new and creative ways to be outrageously villainous and hateful
It’s because furries are overwhelmingly queer and often used as a stand in for fear mongering about trans people (ex: the “litter boxes in schools” rumor).
Moral panic.
The right isn't happy unless it's panicked about some moral outrage. In the absence of anything to be panicked about they make things up to be panicked about.
I just described this phenomenon to a friend of mine today. We were talking about how racism evolved by the same people to be disgust against gay/trans folk. I explained to him that conservatives require an outgroup to hate on in order to operate and be happy.
This mother fucker took a second and said "Do you think modern conservative discrimination was caused by the fall of the Soviet union? I mean, when communism was a big threat everybody was united and happy hating the soviets"
My boy really trying to paint the red scare as a good thing
Who is Oklahoma Rep. Justin Humphrey?
Humphrey has made headlines in recent years in his advocacy of prison reform, capital punishment reform and rural development.
Oh I see now, he's a dumb fuck white, rural, racist dumbass who saw something on the internet that made him feel funny and then tried to pray and then legislate the feelings away.
Also more on Justin Humphrey via wikipedia:
Humphrey's efforts to introduce cockfighting legislation[27] has led to the outcry from animal rights advocates[28] and the former attorney general.[29] Oklahoma has been called the "Cockfighting Capitol of the United States."[30] HB 2530, pushed by Justin Humphrey, died on April 13, 2023, for the second year in a row. Tulsa District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said he was glad cockfighting remained a felony.[31] Transphobia and homophobia
Humphrey has made multiple transphobic comments. In an email responding to a constituent Humphrey said "I understand transgender people have mental illness".[32] This view is not supported by the World Health Organization or the American Psychiatric Association.[32] In an interview published after the incident on April 15, 2021, Humphrey doubled down by saying "I want to tell your audience there is no transgender. There is male and there is female. And transgender would be a mental health issue... So those people that say I'm bigoted, I will say you're insane and you're doing the people wrong by doing that."[32] Freedom Oklahoma, an LGBT advocacy group, denounced Humphrey's comments calling them "a long-debunked myth".[32]
Humphrey was quoted as saying “You’re dang skippy I’ll take my kid to a chicken fighting before I’m gonna take them to see a drag queen."[31]
On the flip side, myself and my high school friends way, way back in the day would have a had a field day with this type of dumbass law. Would be a shame if this passed and students were to test the law and their parents and their state/local traffic engineers who probably didn't think of this type of dumbass shit ever happening.
When I was in high school, for some reason I will never know, the library had a concrete box of sand next to the two staircases that went to the library's second level (it was a pretty big school). The mascot was the Panthers, and I always wanted to do a senior prank where I put fake dog shit in the sandbox and put a sign up that said 'the panther's litter box.' Sadly, I never got around to it. But if this had been a law when I was in high school, I was such an asshole punk kid that I would have taken a shit there myself while meowing like a cat just to make a point.
Imagine if this passes and the next day the entire school staff dresses up as furries in protest. "Okay Timmy you see that person with the fox outfit on? That's your teacher today."
honestly small children might love that
Those masks are expensive as shit though, aren't they?
Yeah, a decent one is going to be $300-500. For a partial, the head is the most expensive part, and cheaping out on it is a great way to get some S-tier nightmare fuel. Full suits are minimum $1000, but I'd say a good one is at least double that, and they can go into the $5k+ range.
I have a friend who makes mascot costumes. She and her husband sometimes wear them out for entertainment. Little kids absolutely ADORE seeing human-sized Pokemon walking around the mall, bowling alley, or the like.
I wonder if this will be the end of school mascots in Oklahoma
Jesus christ do these law makers just have nothing going on? We should really be revoking their pay for what is a complete dumpster fire of a waste of our taxes. I don't want my money going to some white racist dumb fuck basing reality off of Fox news rage articles in his Facebook feed.
Furry here and just want to say: isn't this entire discussion super disrespectful to the important job that animal control personnel actually do?
Like, animal control has an important role in protecting communities from animals and helping animals that are injured. They shouldn't have to be dragged into this stupid outrage farming.
If I worked for animal control and some dipshit school administer asked be to come collect a human child from their school, they would receive the following with the minimum amount of tact needed to keep my job:
I'd like to think most of the people actually employed as animal control officers would respond the same way.
How does Oklahoma have nothing else to legislate on?
If they can keep everyone distracted by The Gays™ or whatever other sexual deviancy the redhats can dream up, then maybe people won't notice the roads falling apart or the useless police, or more importantly, which people are stealing all the money.
My daughter got bullied by other kids for being a furry because she likes leather chokers and they were saying she was wearing a dog collar.
Considering how much school administrations support bullies (while claiming to be anti-bullying), I'm glad we weren't in Oklahoma.
We had to take her out of school due to all of the bullying anyway, but that would have made it even worse.
This is going to really suck for the school mascot.
At first I thought this was satire, but I'm seeing similar articles in tons of other places like Huffpost and Vice. So this is actually true?! Stay strong, my friends...
(I don't have a fursuit or see myself as an animal or anything, but this is crazy. And a total waste of resources too. Hopefully voters are educated enough to see that this is absurd.)
It's true that such a bill was introduced, but wacky bills are introduced all the time. This is proposed legislation, they haven't even voted on it yet, and it's extremely unlikely to pass.
But i think it's also true that you can tell where legislator's minds are based on what wacky bills they introduce.
Imagine being an animal control guy and having a school seriously call you and ask you to take a stranger's child because of that child's participation in a subculture.
I once met a person that was made to believe that "animal-kin" children were being given their own litter boxes in a similar way that transgender children would get their own bathrooms.
The issue with the people who think like this is that they see a few things not like them (a few transgender people) and extrapolate it to utter nonsense (millions of children declaring themselves animals and demanding litter boxes).
If they would think about what they are saying; they would reliaze that their claims are impossible. But then again, they are in their own reality where everything they do makes sense..?
I'm sorry for using such an absurd example but it's a thing older conservatives I know actually believe in.
Oh you have no idea how far that rumor spread. School systems had to issue public denials. One not that far from me did-
Can't wait to see the reporting on the fallout from this, if it goes forward.
Bureaucratic backlash from department heads at Animal Control, and whichever state administration or department that their chain of authority ultimately flows down from.
Overzealous Animal Control officer who assaults a child that a school administrator called in for pickup.
Mass student protests of dozens of kids going to school as furries
And that's just a few off the top of my head. The possibilities are endless.
Mass student protests of dozens of kids going to school as furries
This sounds like the kind of protest id participate in when I was in school. As a parent I'd totally wear a fur suit to pick up my kids as a form of protest
For real, shit-disturbing teenage me would have immediately flipped from "furries are dumb and weird" to "what's the minimum requirement to count as a furry" as soon as I found out that animal control would have to pick us up.
The thought of an old-school dog catcher chasing me with a net while I ran away wearing floppy dog ears is just too amazing to pass up.
What about a fish. Could I be a fish? Oh, what a time to be grown up and with kids of my own instead of being able to be a ridiculous jackass.
And assholes should be required to be picked up by proctologists.
I'm temporarily unlocking this post again, but I'll be keeping an eye on it. I don't want to see it descend into vitriolic lashing out at one another again. Come on, people, keep it civil. This is supposed to be a fun and welcoming community for everyone, and I want it to stay that way.
It's interesting that his official government website doesn't really have any basic defenses. It allows you to message him without even making up a fake address in his district. Doesn't even seem to check to see if you enter in bogus information like a phone number with all 5s. Also interesting that outside of hours calls to his office go right to a non-full mailbox.
I do hope no one just calls outside of their posted hours and leave long messages talking about nothing or uses the website to contact him.
Please no one do things like that.
$10 says the state legislator responsible for the bill is whatever the most-outlandish type of furry possible is.
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