University of Colorado Regent and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl is the latest Republican to repeat outrageous and thoroughly debunked claims about furries in public schools.
“Not many people know that we have furries in Colorado schools,” said Ganahl during a Saturday appearance on Jimmy Sengenberger’s KNUS radio show.
“Have you heard about this story?” Ganahl asked 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 ideology, ideological stuff, 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.”
Ganahl joins Republican Colorado Springs House Scott Bottoms and U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) in repeating patently ridiculous — and false — claims about furries in public schools. The outrage over students who are a part of the niche subculture that embraces anthropomorphic art and cosplay — and is predominantly LGBTQ — stems from remarks made by Nebraska Sen. Bruce Bostelman, a conservative Republican, who repeated false claims about furries using litter boxes in schools during a televised debate on a bill intended to help students who have behavioral problems.
Bostelman has since apologized and retracted his statements.
While Bostelman’s claims that furries are invading public schools has spread across social media, boosted by hate accounts like Libs of TikTok, the fact that he retracted and apologized for his statements has not. These claims about furries have been repeatedly debunked and questioned, but that hasn’t stopped conservatives from repeating them with fury. These claims are frequently used to conflate the existence and/or acceptance of furries with transgender students, in an effort to make a kind of “slippery slope” argument about the dangers of acceptance.
Recently in Indiana, an elderly woman was led into an Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Board meeting on a leash, wearing cat ears and a tail to illustrate the grave threat posed by furries. School districts in Iowa and Texas have also had to dispel rumors about furries generated by conservative social media.
This isn’t the first time Ganahl has shared an anecdote of questionable veracity about trans students. During Eli Bremer’s August launch party for Nine PAC, which supports politicians who adhere to an anti-trans interpretation of Title IX, Ganahl bragged about helping a CU parent whose daughter was allegedly assigned a dorm room with a transgender student. Ganahl’s story was at odds with current CU policies regarding transgender students, and the university was unable to “confirm the alleged details of this specific housing assignment change request.”
Ganahl also attacked Democratic Governor Jared Polis for being “a puppet of the pot industry” and criticized Democratic CU Regent candidate Wanda James for her cannabis business.
“One in 20 kids is getting schizophrenia later on in life, even if they stop using,” said Ganahl. “Psychotic breaks are becoming a real issue among kids because the potency is so high. This isn’t the marijuana of the 80s. This is very high potency marijuana. And it’s dab, it’s butter. It’s shatter. It’s all these things that our kids are using in school. It’s destroying our kids. And one last thing that people in Colorado need to know, we have one of the highest suicide rates for kids in the call in the country. And half of those kids, 50% of the kids, if they complete suicide, have marijuana in their system.”
Ganahl’s comments on teen cannabis use seem scary, but the truth is that teen use is actually on the decline. According to a 2019 report in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, “From 2002-2016, the prevalence of [cannabis use disorder] among people reporting daily/almost daily cannabis use decreased by 26.8% in adolescents, by 29.7% in ages 18-25, and by 37.5% in ages 26 + . Prevalence of DSM-IV cannabis dependence decreased significantly among adolescents (-43.9%) and young adults (-26.8%) but remained stable in adults 26+. Reductions in most dependence items were observed in young adults, with less consistent patterns in adolescents and adults 26+. Prevalence of DSM-IV cannabis abuse decreased overall and for each abuse item across all age groups.”
According to data from the Colorado Healthy Kids Survey, teen cannabis use declined 35% between 2020 and 2021.
