Sen. Tommy Tuberville Calls Trans People “Deranged” and Rants About Furry Pilots in Bizarre Speech

Tommy Tuberville, the U.S. Senator from Alabama who is currently the Republican nominee for the state’s governor, said that transgender people are “deranged” in a speech on the floor of Congress on Tuesday.Appearing next to a poster featuring a pregnant man emoji that read, “Transgenderism Is a Mental Disease,” Tuberville opened his speech by saying that he wanted to speak about “people who the left refers to as ‘transgender’,” saying that he would instead use the term “gender-confused” because the term “transgender,” in his view, “implies that it is possible for a person to change their God-given sex.”Throughout the speech, Tuberville made multiple derogatory references to transgender people, including saying, “It is not normal. It is a cry for help, and our society needs to stop affirming people who are suffering from this mental illness.”Later in the speech, Tuberville says that there is “significantly overlap” between “people who are gender confused and the furry community.” After intentionally conflating trans people and furries, the lawmaker went on to outline why he believes they should not be allowed to pilot planes. “When you walk onto a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal,” Tuberville said, before going on to suggest that we “bring back mental institutions as a normal part of our society.” He later said, “Why is the Democrat Socialist party elevating these people who are clearly mentally deranged? Why is that happening? Joe Biden had multiple gender-confused people working in high-profile jobs in his administration." Though he did not name former Health and Human Services assistant secretary Rachel Levine or assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness Shawn Skelley by name, he did mention that Biden had such people working in both the HHS and the Department of Defense, making it obvious to whom he was likely referr