On Saturday, the Maryland House of Delegates voted to advance a bill that would ban discrimination against trans people in employment and housing—but would stop short of eliminating discrimination in public accommodations. The rationale for giving the state's hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, shops, gyms, and stadiums free reign to legally bar trans people? Think of the toilets!

In recent years, local opponents of trans rights have swatted down proposed gender identity protections in the state by hammering away at the bathroom question. Their argument: When trans people are granted equal access to public restrooms and locker rooms, any man will be empowered to don a skirt, infiltrate a women's bathroom, and rape women and children with impunity. Seriously.

There's no evidence that anyone has ever capitalized upon trans anti-discrimination protections in the hopes of raping anyone, anywhere. But that hasn't stopped groups like Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government from painting all trans people as potential sexual predators plotting to infiltrate "our" toilets. In 2009, Ruth Jacobs—leader of MCRG's "Not My Shower" campaign—explained her crusade to me: "If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?”

That argument apparently proved persuasive to sponsors of the state's current gender identity bill, who agreed to nix the public accommodations language in the hopes of finally signing select anti-discrimination protections into Maryland law. But predictably, the concession has not halted the bill's opponents from incessantly raising the restroom issue.

The Washington Blade account of the House vote reveals a Republican base still obsessed with the sanctity of the state's toilets. "During Saturday’s floor debate over the gender identity bill, opponents, including Del. Joseph Minnick (D-Baltimore County) and Del. Richard Impallaria (R-Baltimore and Harford Counties) raised concerns that the bill would enable men who 'cross dress' as women to create disturbances in the workplace or threaten women in public or workplace bathrooms," Lou Chibbaro Jr. reports. A selection of arguments aired at the vote:

“Every woman should be appalled by this legislation,” said Minnick, who told of once encountering a male-to-female transgender person in a public men’s bathroom at the state capital in the 1990s.

“That left a lasting impression on me,” he said. “The way that person was dressed [he] could have very easily gone into the lady’s room and used the lady’s facility. Now I don’t think that’s what you want with this kind of legislation.”

A few of the delegates opposing the bill pointed to the 1970s television program M.A.S.H., which included a character named Maxwell Klinger. They noted the Klinger character dressed in female clothes at a U.S. Army installation in Korea during the Korean War as a ploy to obtain a “Section 8” psychiatric discharge from the military.

Minnick said the gender identity bill could hurt businesses by allowing cross dressing “scammers” like the Klinger character to create problems at the workplace and file a lawsuit if the employer sought to fire the person.

And in a press release on the Maryland vote, anti-trans group MassResistance argued that once a state protects trans people against workplace discrimination,"they cannot be restricted to using male or female restrooms in stores, restaurants, bars, schools, day care facilities, or other places of employment."

Long after the public accommodations language was stripped from the bill in the hopes of eliminating the toilet posturing, the legislation's opponents have still managed to argue that trans people are only interested in fighting discrimination in housing and employment in order to "scam" the government, sneak into defenseless women's bathrooms, and—it is always implied—rape them.

Del. Joseline Pena-Melnyk, the main sponsor of the bill in the House, told the Washington Blade that the lingering toilet arguments only justify her decision to cut the bill's public accommodations protections. “I did so because the political reality is that I could not have gotten the bill out—look at the discussion today—if I had public accommodations in it."

But it's clear from Saturday's debate that the "Not My Shower" crowd is prepared to use the restroom argument to oppose equal rights for trans people in every context, no matter how illogical the association. These are legislators who rely on personal anecdotes from the 1990s and fictional characters from the 1970s in order to claim that equal employment rights invite a slippery slope to the sexual molestation of children. I have a feeling that no amount of compromise on the trans rights issue will inspire them to change their feelings about trans people.