Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen peddled the widely debunked myth that nondiscrimination protections for transgender people are “an open invitation to sex predators” in public restrooms.

In a May 16 Washington Post opinion piece, Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen repeated the debunked myth that nondiscrimination protections for transgender people will cause male predators to pretend to be transgender in order to sneak into women’s bathrooms and commit sexual assault. Thiessen is a former speechwriter for George W. Bush who authored an error-ridden 2010 book defending the use of torture that The New Yorker called “better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts.”

Thiessen’s fearmongering contradicts the expert testimony of over 300 national, state, and local anti-sexual-assault and domestic violence organizations. It also contradicts the experience of states, cities, and school districts across the country that have had trans-inclusive nondiscrimination policies for years without incident.

From the May 16 column: