For Christian conservatives, wounded from repeated losses in the courts culminating in the Supreme Court’s decision in June to make same-sex marriage legal nationwide, it is a chance to show that Houston was not an isolated victory.

Hundreds of people, many wearing bright orange stickers bearing the sunburst logo of the Jacksonville Coalition for Equality, a gay rights group, turned out this month for the first of three “community conversations” that Mayor Lenny Curry is convening on the so-called H.R.O. The expanded ordinance is not yet written but is expected to go before the City Council early next year.

Inside a standing-room-only hall, where a five-member panel took questions from a moderator and then the audience, the ripple effects of Houston — where opponents’ rallying cry was “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms” — were clear.

“It’s a fact of life that predators attack women and children in bathrooms; it happens everywhere,” said one panelist, Roger Gannam, a lawyer and former Jacksonville resident who represents Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He drew jeers when he said an anti-discrimination law “will make that easier” by allowing male criminals to pose as transgender.