Even GOP candidates for Governor believe that schools are putting litter boxes in schools for “cat identifying” kids
I’m not kidding. We knew these nuts were obsessed with the non-existent “threat” of trans-kids in schools. But apparently, that’s not enough for these kooks. Get a load of this:
The Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota repeated last week a bizarre hoax claim which has been debunked that children are being told they can identify as anthropomorphic cats and are being allowed to use litter boxes to urinate in schools.
Scott Jensen, the Republican candidate and a former state lawmaker, made the comments while speaking to supporters, according to a video of the event posted on Facebook.
“But what about education?” Jensen said. “What are we doing to our kids? Why are we telling elementary kids that they get to choose their gender this week? Why do we have litter boxes in some of the school districts so kids can pee in them, because they identify as a furry? We’ve lost our minds. We’ve lost our minds.”
Furries are a subculture that sometimes involves people dressing up as anthropomorphic animal characters and attending conventions.
The unfounded internet rumor has been repeatedly denied by various school officials who have had to continuously dispute the false claims. Republican officials across the country have continued to cite it, most recently in Colorado by the Republican nominee for governor.
The claim reportedly originated from a community member at a local school board meeting last year and has since spread across the internet. They have been repeatedly shot down by fact-checkers from major news outlets as false. The bizarre conspiracy has spread so much that it even has its own dedicated Wikipedia page.
Here’s the GOP nominee for governor of Colorado:
@heidiganahl says educators are lying when they refute her claim that “kids are identifying as cats” in schools all over Colorado. “The school districts are not being truthful,” Ganahl told KNUS today. “I will tell the truth even if it is uncomfortable.” #cogov #copolitics
Today, @heidiganahl confirmed to KNUS host @GeorgeBrauchler that her campaign is collecting and distributing photos of children they believe are identifying as animals. “We provided pictures but we blurred out the faces,” Ganahl said.
It’s unclear how the Ganahl campaign is confirming that the individual children in the photos they are distributing identify as animals (as opposed to simply dressing up in cat ears or other type of animal costumes).
Ganahl said her campaign is providing the photos they’ve collected to journalists. When 9News asked for proof of her claim last week, a Ganahl spokeswoman provided a screenshot of a photo of someone in a furry costume which appeared to be from a conservative parents FB group.
The Ganahl campaign referred 9News to the Facebook group’s organizer for proof of her claim. Lindsay Datko asked parents to come up with examples prior to deleting her Twitter account earlier this week. Her FB group remains private.
Here’s a sample of her comments:
“Not many people know that we have furries in Colorado schools. Have you heard about this, Jimmy?” Ganahl asked during her September 24 interview with KNUS host Jimmy Sengenberger. “Yeah, kids identifying as cats. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it’s happening all over Colorado, and schools are tolerating it. It’s insane! What on earth are we doing? Knock it off. Schools, put your foot down. Like, stop it. Let’s get back to teaching basics and not allow this woke ideological stuff to infiltrate our schools. And it is happening here in Colorado. It’s why I moved from Boulder Valley to Douglas County, because it was happening in my kids’ schools four years ago.”
It’s been reported for some time that some idiot parents believe this nonsense. It’s been a wingnut internet rumor for a couple of years. But I didn’t realize that actual politicians were railing against it on the stump.
I don’t know if any of these weirdos actually believe this stuff, but judging from the comments of these two, and others, I actually think they believe it. They are so terrified of the world in which they live — so scared they actually think little girls wearing cat ears in elementary school is a threat to the American way of life — that they’ll believe anything. I would assume these are just the usual right wing conspiracy mongers but these are nominees for Governor. What????