THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

With their repugnant Peckerchecker Bathroom Bill, the Lone Brain Cell State of Texas decided they would jump off the same cliff. While the dooly elected yahoos in The Lege hooted and hollered for the bill, the adults in the state have begun to come out of their comas and shout out, "Whoa There, Little Fellas!"

With little more than a week left in Texas’ 30-day special legislative session, a barrage of corporate advertising and activism has the potential to sink legislation restricting transgender bathroom use that has been a flash point in the state’s culture wars.

Social conservatives and the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, have backed the legislation. Gay rights groups, business groups and the House speaker, Joe Straus, one of the few powerful moderate voices in the Texas Legislature, have opposed it. But after the State Senate, where Mr. Patrick presides, passed a bill, a narrower one is showing few signs of life in the 150-member House.

The effort is now focused on the House version, but State Representative Jonathan Stickland, one of the bill’s 46 co-authors and a member of the Tea Party-backed Freedom Caucus, said he was pessimistic about its chances of being allowed to advance to a vote.

“I think the Straus team has already decided that they are not going to let it out,” said Mr. Stickland, who, like other members of the staunchly conservative caucus, persistently defies the speaker’s leadership. “This is clearly part of a national agenda that is being pushed by the progressive left, and I think that that is just all coming to a head here.”

The Senate bill would require transgender people to use bathrooms in schools and local government buildings corresponding to the gender listed on their birth certificates or state-issued identification cards. The House bill would prevent school districts and county or local governments from adopting or enforcing nondiscrimination ordinances that would allow transgender people to use bathrooms of their choice. The ordinance override provision is also an element in the Senate bill.

As usual the "Freedom Caucus" so-called Libertarian assholes include the big government imposition of their wet dream on local governments because you can only be free to be them.