Texas GOP wants to ban kids from playing dress-up: Yes, really

"This whole thing is just weird and, honestly, a little creepy." That comes from a debate in the Texas state legislature that was supposedly about "furries," a subculture of people who dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters. But it wasn't the furries that state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat, was calling creepy.

That would be Republican state Rep. Stan Gerdes, author of the FURRIES Act, an embarrassing acronym that unpacks into the "Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act." Gerdes claims to believe that children in elementary schools are "identifying" as animals, and that the schools are indulging this supposedly dangerous delusion by letting kids eat out of dog bowls or use litter boxes instead of regular bathrooms. Absolutely no part of that true, and it is indeed "a little creepy" for Republicans to obsess over an entirely imaginary problem.

"Texas schools are for educating kids, not indulging in radical trends," declared Gerdes in an X post announcing the bill, which has the support of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The bill purports to ban "non-human behaviors" in school, a list that includes "using a litter box for the passing of stool," "barking, meowing, hissing, or other animal noises," "licking oneself" and an "outward display" of "features that are non-human." There's also a helpful list of such features, including fake tails, "animal-like" ears and fur, whether fake or real, which could certainly cramp the style of those who enjoy fuzzy outerwear in cold weather.

Careful readers may already notice that wearing costumes, which is what Gerdes is trying to describe with this overwrought pseudo-legal language, is not "non-human behavior." Indeed, it is exclusively human behavior. Sure, some folks put little outfits on their pet cats and dogs, but that's not the animal's doing. At least on this planet, only members of homo sapiens are freaky enough to be entertained by a cat dressed as an avocado. I'll note that most cats look annoyed, rather than joyful, when forced to don human-made lewks.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Everything about this bill is based on false claims and absolute nonsense. Young children are not "identifying" as animals in school. The superintendent of the school that was accused of letting kids use litter boxes told the Houston Chronicle that no such thing was happening, and that she'd made an "extra effort" to investigate classrooms herself. "Furries" are real people, mind you, but they're adults — and they don't "identify" as animals, either. They are hobbyists who enjoy dressing up as cartoon characters and stuffed animals, create elaborate artworks involving anthropomorphic animals and sometimes attend conventions while wearing homemade animal costumes.

As for child "furries," that's not a thing because it's both impossible and redundant. Enjoying cartoons, playing games where you sometimes pretend to be an animal and sleeping with your "stuffie" are nearly universal interests for the playground set. "Furries," by definition, are people who still do that stuff after growing up. Yes, some adult furries engage in sexual activity wearing their animal costumes, which is a big part of the moral panic here. But let's get real: Consider the random woman (or man, or whomever) you saw dressed as "sexy cat" last Halloween.

None of this, to be clear, is about animals or about the fiction that some people "identify" as animals. This nonsense is ultimately a backdoor assault on the rights of LGBTQ people. For decades, Christian conservatives have been pushing the myth that LGTBQ identities aren't real; they're just a "trend" pushed by nefarious forces onto gullible young people. That narrative isn't applied quite as loudly to gay people in recent years, but the notion that being trans is a "social contagion" has blossomed into a full-blown moral panic, widely accepted by credulous mainstream media, author J.K. Rowling and even the British Supreme Court. The "furry" urban legend just adds more fuel to the fire. The implicit message here is: "We let the kids be trans and now they think they can be animals." It's a reworked version of a scare tactic the right formerly used to demonize same-sex marriage, by claiming it opened the door to human-pet marriage.

"They have to create more and more absurd examples in order to keep justifying the oppression," explained Imara Jones, a journalist who founded TransLash Media, which seeks to tell the truth about trans people's lives as a counterweight to nonsense like the "furry" narrative. The far-right's goal is to "eliminate trans people from public life completely," Jones argued, and maybe even to force trans people into institutions. With a goal that extreme, she added, "They have to transform trans people into an extreme threat to themselves and others."

Jones compares this to the anti-immigration strategy used by Donald Trump's administration. Both during the campaign and in the White House, Trump and his staff have lied repeatedly about immigrants, claiming they eat pets, they're being used as bioweapons to spread disease, and they are secretly an invading army sent to destroy America. Vice President JD Vance has admitted that these stories are false, claiming that right-wingers are entitled to "create stories" to get the media to "pay attention."

As Jones explains it, once the right has transformed all immigrants into "dangerous predators," that creates political justification to "do all sorts of things," including illegally arresting them and sending them to foreign prison camps with no pretense of due process. The "furry" hoax, she suggests, is a "parallel effort" to justify human rights abuses against trans people. So far, Republicans have not tried to use this ginned-up moral panic to arrest trans people en masse, but we're clearly seeing escalating attacks. Trump signed a series of executive orders meant to make it harder for trans people to move about in public, work, get an education or even use a public bathroom. So far, the biggest impact has been in the U.S. military, after the Supreme Court allowed Trump's ban on trans service members to remain in place. The Defense Department wants to discharge more than 4,000 trans service members who have done nothing wrong.

Despite their claims to be defending humankind from this imaginary animalistic incursion, Texas Republicans are being deeply anti-human with this "furry" bill. The behaviors that Gerdes' bill seeks to stigmatize are — as any person who has ever met a child or been a child could tell you — entirely normal forms of play. Kids love animals! The love to pretend to be animals, which is why so many children's books, movies, TV shows and toys feature human-like animal characters as often as human ones. Older kids and adults — even those who aren't furries — also love some animal-themed goofing off: Consider the mascots associated wity many college sports teams. Cultures from every corner of the planet have holidays and festivals where people dress up in colorful animal masks or costumes.

Gerdes' bill includes some "exceptions" to his draconian ban on this universal human behavior, but those only serve to underscore the bizarre misanthropy of the MAGA movement. Schools are allowed to celebrate Halloween or "school dress-up or activity days" that feature costumes — but only if "there are not more than five such days in a school year." Exceptions are made for school plays and sports mascots. That's it, though. If a group of second-graders want to play "My Little Pony" during recess, or act out an episode of "Paw Patrol," they'd better do it on one of their allotted five days a year! This is an especially ludicrous example of how anti-trans panic serves as a pretext for stripping away creativity and free expression from virtually everybody, regardless of their gender or sexual identity.