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Humphreys said he was making a sarcastic point with the bill and is happy to replace the phrase animal control with mental health professionals, according to Rolling Stone. Humphrey has a reputation for introducing strongly worded bills, having also proposed designating convicted Hispanic gang members as terrorists and requiring pregnant women, whom Humphrey referred to as hosts, to obtain the consent of the father to have an abortion. University of Oklahoma Sooners mascot during the game at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Such a mascot may be prohibited at K-12 public schools if an Oklahoma bill were to become law.
New Bill Would Ban 'Furries' From The Classroom
News of the bill began to spread on January 17th, 2024, with multiple news media sites including HuffPost[4] and Rolling Stone[5] reporting on it. Besides news outlets reporting on the bill, many netizens had a field day making fun of Rep. Justin Humphrey and Oklahoma House Bill 3084, especially the furry community, who openly stated their repulsion towards the proposed law. Every year, the State Election Board will have to query the voter registration database. Addresses with more than 10 registered voters will be passed along to local district attorneys who will investigate to determine if there is any violation of the state's voter laws.
Fursona non grata: Oklahoma lawmaker moves to ban ‘furryism’ in public schools
Oklahoma lawmakers are preparing to start 2024's legislative sessions by sending thousands of bills in the hopes of adding new laws, but most of them will never come close to getting approved. One representative, Rep. Justin Humphrey, has been featured in news headlines nationwide for an unusual bill targeting furries in schools, a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animal characters. 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'" from participating in school curriculum or activities. A state legislator in Oklahoma has pre-filed a bill that would ban students who identify as furries from schools — no, really.
Who is Justin Humphrey?
Even if the anti-furry moral panic wasn’t really just a smokescreen for transphobia, it would still be cruel toward children in a way that we should oppose. If we believe that children deserve the right to self-expression, that holds true for whatever form that expression might take, whether that’s wearing clothing that doesn’t “align” with the gender they were assigned at birth or drawing themselves as an anthropomorphic dog. No matter what group they’re targeting, the Republican rallying cry to “protect the children,” used by many as political currency, only serves to further disenfranchise minors. In later interviews, the legislator claimed the bill was written in response to students behaving like animals and using litter boxes at schools, which has widely been debunked as a hoax. Circling back to the Oklahoma ban, the sponsor of this bill cites a debunked story of schools providing litter boxes to furries as the impetus for the legislation.
Furry Scale
And while dressing up as anthropomorphized animals may be confusing or unsettling to some, it is, as a general proposition, protected by the First Amendment. Attempts to regulate furries’ self-expression, were they seriously advanced, would thus nonetheless face, in primary and secondary education settings, the same constitutional safeguards that have protected student rights at public schools for decades. In a video talking about the bill, Humphrey said he doesn’t wanna see kids using litter boxes, and that people have “lost their minds” by allowing students to “pretend to be animals” at school. Later on January 19th, Redditor u/Xyynez posted a headline about the bill to /r/BrandNewSentence[11] titled "students dressed as furries could be collected by animal control," garnering over 2,200 upvotes in under a day.
Bill Text: OK HB3084 2024 Regular Session Introduced
On January 17th, 2024, X[6] user @ZeppelinCoyote (a furry) posted several photos of themselves in their fursuit during high school, writing, "oklahoma is attempting to codify into law that furries can be removed from school using animal control," garnering over 170 likes in two days (shown below). On January 18th, TikToker[7] @woke_karen posted a video explaining the bill, garnering over 45,000 views in a day. The bill would require parents or guardians to pick the student up from school. But, if parents are unable to pick the student up, the bill says "animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student."
Republican bill would ban student furries from school - PinkNews
Republican bill would ban student furries from school.
Posted: Fri, 19 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Related Memes
He does admit the verbiage in the bill about calling animal control to the school if an offending student’s parents won’t come pick them up is likely to come out of the bill via an amendment. So if you’re going to pretend to be an animal, we’re going to have a hard time instructing you. I think most schools will agree with me, most superintendents agree,” Humphrey said. Before the 2024 Oklahoma legislative sessions begin, thousands of bills will be filed, and most will never come close to becoming law.
Only about 20 percent of furries have costumes, he added, like fans of cosplay or comic book conventions. "The ones who don't necessarily want to costume, they go to conventions," Cole said. "Not all furries are fursuiters, and some fursuiters aren't really furries. Some are just people who like to perform."
Ahead of the 2024 Oklahoma legislative session, Humphrey filed a bill targeting "furries," or people in a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animal characters, in Oklahoma schools. Under this bill introduced by Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-Lane), students who violate this would need to be picked up by their parents or guardians from school. The bill would also allow for animal control services to be called to remove the student. Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-19th District) felt that the (nonexistent) epidemic of openly furry students was so urgent it needed legislative remedy in the form of House Bill 3084. The bill is short, defining furries as “students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior.” It does not define what that behavior might entail in the context of a school environment, however. Ahead of the 2024 Oklahoma State Legislature regular session, State Representative Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, filed House Bill 3084.
The bill blocks Oklahoma students who behave like animals from participating in school. The filed legislation also states that if a parent or guardian does not pick up these students, animal control will be called to remove them. It may be easy to dismiss HB 3084 as a stunt, but whatever else it is, it illustrates how legislation instituting absolute, indiscriminate bans on expression one finds objectionable can sweep in expression that is not substantially disruptive, or even that which is commonly accepted or even encouraged in a school setting. If this bill were to become law, a student who wears little or no animal-related apparel but simply states that they are a particular animal would be removed from school.
On January 19th, X[10] user @karrotknife posted in response to the news, "you're a resident of oklahoma stop worrying about furries and go back to kissing your cousin," garnering over 130 likes in under a day. Register now for our free OneVote public service or GAITS Pro trial account and you can begin tracking this and other legislation, all driven by the real-time data of the LegiScan API. Providing tools allowing you to research pending legislation, stay informed with email alerts, content feeds, and share dynamic reports. Use our new PolitiCorps to join with friends and collegaues to monitor & discuss bills through the process.Monitor Legislation or view this same bill number from multiple sessions or take advantage of our national legislative search. It’s a bill wanting to get animal control involved for students who dress and act like animals.
It's been the source of social media rumors for years, after reports of kids identifying as cats, even wearing tails, and grooming themselves in the classroom. "It is crazy that this is something we have to address," Rep. Justin Humphrey said. "It is crazy that this is something we have to address," Representative Justin Humphrey said. The bill has been a hot topic for the furry community and netizens debating if kids acting like animals at school is really a widespread problem in the United States, so let's explain Oklahoma House Bill 3084 and the memes going around about it. That day, the Dexerto X[8] page posted about the bill, garnering over 30,000 likes in a day. Meme expressing shock over the bill, garnering over 24,000 likes in the same timeframe (shown below).
The bill was written up in December 2023 and went viral in mid-January 2024 along with a video of Humphrey using a myth about classes putting litter boxes in classrooms for students who identify as cats to support the bill, inspiring reactions and memes online, including pushback from the furry community. Humphrey’s anti-furries bill, formally titled "Oklahoma House Bill 3084," was written on December 6th and proposes that "students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities." 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. The proposed bill inspired reactions and memes on social media, including pushback from the furry community.
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