Fox News contributor Erick Erickson praised the defeat of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance on Tuesday, calling transgender Americans “perverts, the mentally ill, [and] liars.”

The vote on the equal rights ordinance was expected to be close, but it failed with 62 percent of voters opposing it at the time the results were called by the Associated Press. The ordinance was initially adopted by the Houston City Council in May 2014, however a lawsuit ended with the ordinance placed on Houston's November 3 ballot.

The fight over HERO has been plagued by the widely-debunked myth that HERO would allow sexual predators to sneak into women's restrooms by pretending to be transgender -- a bogus talking point championed by HERO's opponents, including Erickson earlier on Tuesday. Experts across the country and officials from Texas cities with similar non-discrimination ordinances have thoroughly rejected the “bathroom predator” myth, calling it “beyond specious.”

Erickson lauded the unsuccessful ordinance measure claiming “the people of Houston fought back and rejected the attempt to allow perverts” to get in opposite sex bathrooms. From Erickson's November 3 post on Red State:

Tonight, the people of Houston fought back and rejected the attempt to allow perverts, the mentally ill, liars, and others who want to get in to opposite sex bathrooms.

Christians and common sense won. Perverts, the mentally ill, and the gay rights mob lost.

It remains unscientific that men can be women and women can be men. But it has become an article of faith to the supposedly pro-science left -- an article of faith rejected by the people of Texas.