Last Wednesday, dozens of students skipped class to gather outside a Payson, Utah, middle school for hours and chant, “We the people, not the animals!”—a protest launched over the dramatic accusation that their classmates were running wild as “furries” and attacking other students without consequence.
Much of the hysteria, however, has been blown out of proportion.
Footage from the scene showed them hoisting signs declaring, “Compelled speech is not free speech,” “We won’t be compelled,” and “We just want to learn.” A fourth sign read, “You can’t ignore us,” with a drawing of an animal print covered with a prohibition sign.
ADVERTISEMENT
“They’re sitting on all fours in class,” one student told conservative livestreamer Adam Bartholomew as the kids (and some parents) lined the road to Mt. Nebo Middle School. “They’re wearing animal costumes. They’re growling at us, barking at us in class, it’s very distracting.”
“It’s very sexual and inappropriate,” the pupil added of their tween classmates accused of being “furries,” a subculture that dresses up as anthropomorphic animals and which has become a conservative bogeyman.
“They’re wearing butt-plug tails underneath skirts. They’re wearing dog collars to school with leashes hanging off. It’s not OK.”
In the small city about 58 miles south of Salt Lake City, “furry” panic has taken over.
The protesters claim middle-schoolers are dressing up as cats, dogs and foxes, and barking, biting, scratching, growling and spraying Febreze at their foes.
What started as a bullying complaint and school-wide reminder to be respectful to peers has become a right-wing cause célèbre and has ignited at least two bomb threats. Yesterday the school district said it had received even more reports of threats against staff and that police had again swept the building for explosives—though nothing was found.
The controversy has spread quickly among the usual right-leaning suspects, with Glenn Beck, his network the Blaze, Megyn Kelly, and Fox News picking up the cause. Social media provocateur Libs of TikTok shared Bartholomew’s video, along with images taken by another right-wing dad of kids he claimed were “furries” at school, further stoking the flames of outrage.
It’s not the first time Republicans have whipped up moral panic over furries.
Rep. Lauren Boebert and her ilk previously warned that teachers were catering to students by “putting litter boxes in schools for people who identify as cats.” (This claim, often repeated, has been disproven time and again.)
Nebo School District spokesman Seth Sorenson told The Daily Beast that students’ accusations about “furry” classmates were untrue.
The wild dispute began after one group of middle-schoolers at Mt. Nebo—whose mascot is a panther—singled out another clique based on how they were dressed, Sorenson said. (He told the Salt Lake Tribune that some kids wore headbands “that may have ears on them.”)
On April 15, teachers reminded kids of Mt. Nebo’s slogan, “R.O.A.R,” which advises students to be Respectful, Outstanding, Academic, and Responsible. According to an email sent to parents and guardians, teachers shared a message that read in part, “As responsible citizens, we hope you will look out for each other, take care of each other and treat each other with kindness.” The email then cited the district’s dress code, asking that any clothing or accessory that becomes a nuisance or distraction be left at home.
“Somehow some people misunderstood that message or misinterpreted it,” Sorenson told The Daily Beast. “We’re not really sure exactly what happened.”
Instead of having a conversation with the administration, Sorenson said, people in the community took to social media and organized about 75 protesters during the school day. Sorenson estimates the group included a number of parents, high schoolers, and junior high students, with only a small number of Mt. Nebo students.
“We’re not really sure how it exploded as quickly and as crazily as it did, but what we can tell you is there have been zero incidents of students biting, licking, all of those things that have been claimed,” Sorenson continued.
Bartholomew, the Blaze, and others bashed local media for reporting on the school district’s announcement that it found no evidence of actual furries.
A local mom, who asked to withhold her last name to protect her kids, said one of her daughters is friendly with the accused “furries.”
She told The Daily Beast the children crafted masks as a hobby and brought them to school to show off, donning them at lunch time and after school. But earlier this year, the administration told the students to stop wearing them to school.
The woman said her daughter, who’d only worn a mask once or twice, came home one day and asked, “Mom, what’s a furry?”
Classmates had branded her one because of her friends, the mother said, and some bullied them by throwing chocolate milk and oranges at them during lunch, even when they weren’t dressed in animal accessories.
“So who’s bullying who? Because the school is saying that the [kids being unfairly labeled as furries] are being bullied. My experience is saying the furries are being bullied. The video that I’m showing is showing the furries getting bullied,” she added.
One video the group has presented, the mom said, is of a girl her daughter doesn’t know barking without any costume or accessories. “Kids are regurgitating what their parents are saying,” she said, adding that it seemed like the group was trying to “push a political agenda.”
She said she pulled her daughter out of school after the protest. “My daughter just texted me, ‘Mom, I’m really scared. Can you come get me?’ So I’m driving past and seeing all these like adults and kids shouting and I know that this is all centered around six little girls,” she said.
The Blaze published brief clips of children in animal masks, barking and crawling on all fours on the playground, as classmates nearby laughed at them. It also printed photos of kids wearing what appeared to be fuzzy animal ears, leggings, and animal paw gloves—though no footage shared with right-wing outlets includes the full-body costumes associated with furries or depicts a student biting or physically attacking another.
“We’ve never had any reports, either from students or any observations by teachers or administration,” Sorenson said. “We do have cameras in our buildings, so we can see literally every inch of the building. And we have not captured any of those types of events occurring. So those, as far as we’re concerned, are just completely fictitious.”
Sorenson said the district doesn’t allow kids to wear masks or costumes, but the accused “furries” were asked to stop wearing headbands with ears; they complied immediately.
The drama didn’t end there.
On Friday, Sorenson said, someone sent disturbing emails to media outlets, the governor’s office, and the school district, including a bomb threat to the school and death threats to staff—leading to cops increasing patrols around the facility.
“The whole situation has been like a snowball that starts rolling down the hill and just gains speed,” he said.
In community Facebook groups, some parents complained the so-called “furries” targeted or even bit their kids, who faced discipline for fighting back.
Among them was Kjerstyn Pledger, who on April 12 posted on Facebook that she was putting together a group with “all parents willing to take a stand.”
She told The Daily Beast that her son came home upset because he was “being bullied” by a furry.
“It’s distracting,” she said. “They’re licking themselves clean in class. Kids bring tennis balls to school and throw them down the hallway for the dog ones to catch.”
Pledger said she posted about the issue on Facebook after contacting the district and not receiving a response. She believes “furry” acceptance is just part of “social-emotional learning”—a concept frequently under attack by conservatives.
“It’s exposure therapy,” Pledger fumed, “trying to get them to accept the lie.”
“I just feel that the school systems are trying to reorder our values and beliefs and even the idea of what is truth. I don’t feel that it’s right that my kid should be forced to pretend like seeing a kid walk on all fours and think he’s an animal is normal, because it’s not.”
Pledger told The Daily Beast one teen girl (identified as Kendalyn in a Blaze report) arranged the student walkout and insists parents didn’t orchestrate it.
Another mom, Spencer Pierce, said the “furries” have bit her son through his clothes and “drooled” on him, but she hasn’t spoken to the district because he isn’t as upset as other classmates about the supposed animal-mimicking group. The behavior “needs to be abolished and not catered to,” Pierce told The Daily Beast.
Sorenson said the district saw various Facebook comments from Utah residents and tried contacting them to arrange meetings at the school. “The majority sadly are not parents from our district,” Sorenson said, “but those that are, we’ve done everything we can to reach out and help them understand the situation.”
In a private Facebook chat about the protest, the parents discussed what kids should say at the event, and revealed that the Blaze, Glenn Beck’s media company, was in touch with them.
“I’m glad this is going to go national,” wrote Eric Moutsos, a dad and former cop who once made headlines for refusing to ride at the front of a Salt Lake City gay pride parade. (Moutsos argues the police department refused his request to work a different part of the event and instead put him on leave, leading him to quit soon after.)
The chat also included Bartholomew’s wife Cari, who is running for the Utah State Board of Education and has decried the “hard left educational turn” in the state.
One parent of a student organizer insisted that her daughter single-handedly planned the protest and a petition that collected over 1,000 signatures. “If you are hearing otherwise, YOU ARE BEING LIED TO. #LIVE NOT BY LIES.”
Some messages, however, seemed to indicate the parents shaped the kids’ protest posters.
“The kids really want to hammer this home,” the woman wrote in an earlier message. “WE HAVE TO CHANGE OUR POSTERS. The message needs to be: I will not comply. Compelled speech is not free speech. Live not by lies.”
Pledger, in her own message, advised parents to tell their kids to remain calm and not engage in teasing or bullying. “THE OPPOSITION SIDE WANTS OUTRAGE!” she wrote.
Kendalyn, the 13-year-old behind the protest, called into a conservative podcast this week where Adam Bartholomew was also featured as a guest.
Her little brother alerted her to Pledger’s Facebook post, she said, and along with her parents, she launched a petition against furries and circulated it at school.
Bartholomew and the hosts called the young culture warrior a hero during the conversation, where Kendalyn described the furry fandom a “sexual fetish” and spoke out against the transgender movement.
“I feel like if it was the furries or LGBTQIA-plus-plus-plus whatever community, if it was them doing this walkout and this protest … the school would have their back 100%,” Kendalyn said.
“But since it’s us and since it’s the conservatives and all these students are going against them, they don’t like it because now we are bringing all their secrets to light.”
