The world’s greatest deliberative body has hosted historic debates over everything from slavery to the Missouri Compromise, with legendary senators like Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun showing off their oratory chops.
This week, Sen. Tommy Tuberville introduced a new chapter in Senate discourse: furries.
Standing in the world’s greatest deliberative body, the Alabama Republican and former college football head coach issued a warning that “gender confusion” is a “mental illness plaguing our society.” He claimed there’s “significant overlap” between people who are “gender-confused” and the furry community — people who dress up in animal costumes as a hobby.
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“Research shows that 25% of the ’furries’ are gender-confused,” Mr. Tuberville said, calling it more proof the country is “going to heck in a hand basket.”
Mr. Tuberville tied the furry culture to shootings, describing it as “a bizarre subset of transgenderism where people are sexually attracted and frequently dressed up as animals.”
Then he got to the part he really wants people to worry about: air travel.
“Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community,” Mr. Tuberville said. “Lord help us. It’s terrifying when you think about this. When you walk onto a commercial flight, it is possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal.”
Furries are people who create their own cartoon-style animal character — sometimes with a costume to match — and hang out with others who do the same, mostly as a shared hobby and fandom.
According to Fursciene.com, more than 75% of furries are under the age of 25. Approximately 84% of furries identify as male, 13% female, and 2.5% are transgender.
“The furry fandom is global, with hundreds of local groups existing worldwide and dozens of conventions held annually,” the website says.
Asked what prompted his floor speech, a Tuberville spokesperson said the senator had “seen several news stories” tying furries to aviation — including an incident earlier this year in which pilots at Washington Reagan National Airport were caught barking and meowing at each other over the radio, and an “Aviation Furs” meetup that happened at a furry convention in Minneapolis.
The timing is its own story.
Mr. Tuberville isn’t just a senator making a floor speech — he’s currently the Republican nominee for Alabama governor, running against former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in the Nov. 3 election, which puts everything he says on the floor this fall under a different kind of scrutiny.
Mr. Jones didn’t let it pass quietly.
“My only comment is that was the strangest speech on the floor of the United States Senate that I have ever heard,” he said when asked about it at a news conference. “It was absolutely unbecoming of a United States senator.”
Late-night piled on too.
Jimmy Kimmel worked the clip into his show, mocking Mr. Tuberville’s “sitting ducks” warning and dubbing him one of the Senate’s “truly unsung dip——s.”
Republicans, more broadly, are heading into a tough midterm map with voters far more focused on gas, grocery and housing prices than culture-war fights.
President Trump has leaned hard into transgender issues to cast Democrats as out of touch, and candidates in competitive races — Mr. Tuberville included — are following his lead, betting the issue can both fire up the base and needle swing voters.
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