Updated at 11:17 a.m. Friday: Revised to include the news of North Carolina's repeal vote.

AUSTIN — Two groups tapped by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to lead a statewide campaign for his divisive bathroom bill are longtime opponents of LGBT rights that have called transgender people "unnatural" and "unhealthy" peddlers of "destructive behavior."

Earlier this month, Patrick launched "Operation One Million Voices," a new effort spearheaded by Rick Scarborough's Vision America and Tony Perkins' Family Research Council to garner Christian support for Senate Bill 6, the so-called bathroom bill.

Supporters say the measure, which would restrict bathroom access based on biological sex, isn't meant to target transgender Texans. But LGBT advocates say the leaders Patrick chose to head his campaign — who have called members of the transgender community "confused" and "sinful" people who can be cured through religious intervention — are troubling spokesmen for a bill its proponents insist isn't meant to be discriminatory.

“The lieutenant governor does not check with every supporter of legislation he champions regarding their position on other issues,” Patrick spokesman Alejandro Garcia said in response to questions about Scarborough and Perkins’ past anti-LGBT statements. “Senate Bill 6 is a public safety and privacy bill.”

The bill now awaits debate in the Texas House, where it has far less support from that chamber’s Republicans. Amid concerns the measure could die there, Operation One Million Voices has promised to ramp up its efforts, headed by groups that reject not only greater rights for transgender people, but also their very existence.

"Governments should not recognize any change in sexual identity from that identified at birth," the Family Research Council believes, according to the group's official policy paper. "Neither lawmakers nor counselors, pastors, teachers, nor medical professionals should participate in or reinforce the transgender movement's lies about sexuality."

The whetstone

“North Carolina was the tip of the spear,” Patrick said the day he unveiled Operation One Million Voices. “We will be next.”

One year ago, North Carolina became the first state to pass a "bathroom bill," adopting a state law that excludes transgender men and women from restrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. That law was repealed and replaced Thursday with one that more closely resembles Texas' bill.

If the Tar Heel State was the tip of the spear for instituting these laws, Family Research Council was the whetstone.

"North Carolina is the result of probably a couple years of well over 100 regional meetings," Randy Wilson, the council's national field director for church ministries, said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. "We are working this across the country."

Now, they’re focused on Texas.

Rep from Vision America heading up pro-bathroom bill "one million voices" push says they'll educate Christian pastors on #SB6. #txlege #lgbt pic.twitter.com/RI9UzywZvC — Lauren McGaughy (@lmcgaughy) March 6, 2017

Scarborough and Perkins have long been considered two of the most influential conservative leaders in the nation. Scarborough, once a Southern Baptist preacher and tea party activist from Pearland, founded Vision America in 1994 to educate and mobilize pastors for conservative causes. Perkins, a former Louisiana state representative, is the fourth president of the Family Research Council, which is based in Washington, D.C.

Gay rights activists hold placards in the background as Minister Rick Scarborough (middle) of Vision America and an ad hoc coalition of concerned ministers from various denominations hold a rally to "boldly preach Biblical truth concerning the subject of homosexuality" in front of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C., November 16, 2009. (JIM WATSON / AFP/Getty Images)

Both groups have led the charge against LGBT rights, from opposing same-sex marriage to the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy." In recent years, they've turned their sights to the transgender community, railing against what both men have called the nation's move away from Judeo-Christian values and toward "sexual anarchy."

Lou Weaver, coordinator for transgender programs at Equality Texas, said the lieutenant governor's choice to solicit these groups' help was telling: "Patrick brought in people that regularly use religion as a weapon against transgender people."

Patrick himself has long been the loudest proponent of the bathroom bill in Texas. The measure, which would require people to use bathrooms in public schools and government buildings that match the "biological sex" on their birth certificate, was in the works months before he announced Brenham Republican Lois Kolkhorst would shepherd it through the Senate.

On March 6, Patrick ramped up the rhetoric. That day, he announced he was bringing in the political and religious might of Scarborough and Perkins' groups, with support from the Texas Pastors Council, Hispanic Action Network, Texas Values and other conservative organizations.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, center, announces "Operation One Million Voices" to promote Senate Bill 6, the so-called bathroom bill, on March 6, 2017. The effort is being lead by Vision America and the Family Research Council, two groups with long histories of opposing LGBT rights. (Eric Gay / AP)

Since then, 11 "regional pastor awakening summits" have been scheduled, with three more in the works. They want to reach hundreds of Christian leaders, who they hope will tell at least one million of their parishioners about the bathroom bill.

They'll track progress using a nationwide database of pastors and the sizes of their congregations. Vision America President John Graves reports to Patrick, while Wilson helps run the local meetings, he said.

The day Operation One Million Voices was launched, Kolkhorst and Sen. Eddie Lucio, the only Senate Democrat who voted for the bill, joined the group for a meeting with pastors in Austin. Neither senator responded to questions about past anti-LGBT statements by the groups.

The next day, almost 2,000 people flooded the Capitol for the bathroom bill’s first public debate. Capitol researchers said the crowd was nearly unprecedented; it was the third-largest since they began counting crowds electronically in 2007.

The vast majority — 86 percent — showed up to oppose the bill, calling it government-approved discrimination. But their voices did not sway the committee, which voted 8-1 in favor of the bill.

Many of the 245 people who spoke in support of the bill were pastors Patrick invited to the Capitol. Republican senators also invited Perkins to speak, and that same afternoon, Family Research Council rented out the Capitol’s auditorium down the hall from the hearing.

There, Perkins stood with Patrick and Graves to praise the bill.

“This is the right thing to do, and it’s being done the right way. It’s not being done behind closed doors,” Perkins said. “It’s being done through public debate and discussion through the legislative body.”

Operation One Million Voices held its first "regional pastor awakening summit" at a Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen in Fort Worth last week. The meeting took place behind closed doors.

'An issue of privacy'

Wilson said Operation One Million Voices doesn’t want to reveal its full playbook. The summits have already attracted naysayers — including one man Wilson said heckled attendees at the meeting in Fort Worth — a distraction the movement doesn’t have time for.

Organizers are too busy ramping up for their next push at the state Capitol, which will come in mid-April. That's why doors have to remain closed.

But Wilson said the group’s purpose is not to “condemn” anyone.

Lawmakers supportive of the bathroom bill have echoed that sentiment, insisting the measure isn't meant to target transgender people. But handing that group more rights could erode those hard fought and won by women, Kolkhorst has said.

"Unless we act, those advancements might erode into a gender-fluid, what I might say, highly litigated position. If males can instantly be declared to be a female," Kolkhorst asked at a March event hosted by Vision America and Texas Values, "then what becomes of female athletics, or women's rights for that matter?

"We must put safety and dignity ahead of social engineering that is disguised as civil rights."

Perkins and Graves have also hammered on this idea. Graves called the bathroom bill "an issue of privacy and of safety" at the Operation One Million Voices launch. Perkins has said it would keep lawbreakers from entering restrooms for nefarious purposes, saying the threat does not primarily come from persons who identify as transgender.

“Rather it comes from those who might exploit this situation by posing as transgender to gain easier access to, usually, women’s bathrooms,” he said.

'Sexual anarchy'

Despite their protestations that the bill has nothing to do with transgender men, women and children, the groups have had a lot to say about that community in the past.

The Family Research Council's official stance on homosexuality and "transgenderism" [sic] is that they constitute behavior that is "unhealthy and destructive to individual persons, families, and society." The group supports a practice akin to conversion therapy.

The transgender movement, the group believes, is the third wave of “an assault on the sexes” that began with feminism and continued with gay rights. Perkins has advocated disbanding the military before allowing transgender soldiers to serve, and he criticized the Boy Scouts for encouraging what he called “sexual anarchy” by letting transgender kids participate.

In a February video that guest-starred Patrick, Perkins interviewed council analyst Cathy Ruse, who said advocating for transgender rights is "an effort by elites and government bureaucrats" to gain more power over their "subjects" through "mind hacking."

Scarborough has called transgender people “cross-dressing, gender-confused adults” bent on advancing the “transgender assault on biblical marriage.” When President Barack Obama designated June LGBT Pride Month, Scarborough penned a scathing critique.

"Exactly what do these people — defined exclusively by their aberrant sexual behavior — have to be proud about?" he asked. "Those who engage in unnatural acts should hang their heads in shame — so should the president who asks us to celebrate their sinful lifestyle."

And the Texas Pastors Council, in a letter supporting the bathroom bill, railed against “elevating sexual lifestyles and gender confusion."

“There is no civil right to do that which God declares morally wrong or directly contradicts His written word,” the letter read.

This week, they tried to shame the 10 senators who voted against the bathroom bill by giving them an award featuring their face in a toilet seat. They could do the same for any House members who don't also pledge to back the measure.

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, waits to speak near the Supreme Court, April 28, 2015 in Washington, D.C., as the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Asked about the Family Research Council's past statements, Wilson, the field director, said their views are supported by science.

“People in this country have the freedom to do and live however they want to,” Wilson said. “Our beliefs are based on what we see the Bible speak to as the best way to raise up and sustain a healthy, growing, thriving culture.

“There’s less drug abuse, there’s less alcoholism — less, less, less — when there is a man-woman marriage and intact family. The more a family goes to church,” he added, “the more happy or healthy that they are.”

S. David Wynn, the lead pastor at the Agape Metropolitan Community Church in Fort Worth, said tapping these groups to lead the charge for Senate Bill 6 offends him.

"These groups have really missed the mark because they're not advancing an ethic of love and compassion. That's what I find offensive about it," said Wynn, a transgender man and father. "Not all Christians are intolerant and small."