Former Houston Astros star Lance Berkman has jumped into the debate over the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, attacking the law for providing equal protection for LGBT people.

Berman uses a popular smokescreen - the idea of boys suddenly showering with girls in the locker room - to attack the equal-rights law. As gay people and same-sex couples have found increasing acceptance, that has become a popular method of division for the anti-LGBT forces in Houston, to go after trans youth as some kind of sexual predators.

"No men in women's bathrooms, no boys in girls' showers or locker rooms," Berkman says in a new radio ad. "I played professional baseball for 15 years, but my family is more important. My wife and I have four daughters. Proposition 1, the bathroom ordinance, would allow troubled men to enter women's public bathrooms, showers and locker rooms. This would violate their privacy and put them in harm's way."

So now transgender women are "troubled men." Disgusting.

Of course, what the ordinance actually does is open public accommodations to trans people. Berkman and his homophobic and transphobic cohorts are locking onto this image of same crazed vagabond wandering into a women's bathroom and raping them.

It's a disgusting display of ignorance and intolerance, and it's a shame that someone of Berkman's stature would use his name and voice to further marginalize at-risk trans youth.

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance comes to a popular vote Nov. 3.

Listen to the Lance Berkman hero ad

Hat tip to Erik.