Mobile County Commission President Jerry Carl has waded into the discussion over public restroom use with a Facebook post raising the fear of "street freaks" ogling women and children and sexual predators masquerading as transgender to gain access to their victims.

"Wake up men!" begins the post, written somewhere around 11 p.m. Wednesday. "Do you really want your wives and daughters using the same restroom with every street freak that wants to wander in and look around! In my travels I have been in a couple of countries in Europe where the public restrooms are open to men and women. Words can not describe how uncomfortable it is trying to use the bathroom with 40 women watching! Now do you want your wives, daughters, and granddaughters put on display for all your buddy's and street freaks to watch? I think not."

Mid-afternoon on Thursday, Carl added a note to to the original post indicating that he had predators in mind when he made his comments, and hadn't aimed his remarks at transgendered persons. "My response is about men and women being forced to use the same restroom, not about whether a person is straight or transgendered," he wrote. "Street freaks as I referred to are "sexual predators" doing or being anything they need to be to feed their sick compulsiveness actions to exploit total strangers.

In the orginal post, Carl included a link to a 2014 story about a sexual predator on www.lifesitenews.com, a news site whose guiding principles include a belief that "life and family are endangered by an international conflict ... caused by secularists attempting to eliminate Christian morality and natural law principles" and that homosexuality is one of the core issues of the conflict. The site's report in turn is based on a Toronto Sun report about a Canadian man with a long history of sexual misconduct charges who, in 2012, pretended to be a transgender woman so that he could get into two women's shelters. In 2013 he was convicted on two counts of sexual assault and one of criminal harassment against women in those shelters.

Based on the Toronto Sun story, the 2012 Canadian incident appears to involve no actual transgender people or public restrooms.

Carl's comments coincide with public discussion over a wave of U.S. state laws ostensibly promoting religious freedom. Critics have argued that they are discriminatory, potentially allowing businesses to deny service to homosexuals or criminalizing transgender persons for their choice of public restroom.

Recently enacted laws in North Carolina and Mississippi have generated considerable backlash, including the cancellation of major concerts and the loss of convention and other business. No such state law appears to be on the front burner in Alabama, and some economic development officials have said they hope the state, already grappling with governmental scandal, won't gyrate into the national controversy.

Among those was Wiley Blankenship, president and CEO of the Coastal Alabama Partnership. On Thursday, he said he wasn't sure about the motivation for Carl's post.

"We in Alabama don't need to draw attention in a negative light," he said. "Why poke the bear, is how I look at it."

Blankenship said he sits on the board of the Southern Economic Development Council, and that members of the regional organization are monitoring the issue. He reiterated his view that any states following the lead of North Carolina and Mississippi are likely to suffer similar backlash.

Speaking Thursday afternoon, Carl said transgender issues hadn't been on his mind at all when he wrote his post: He was thinking about cases such as that of Patrick Herron, a man arrested by Mobile police in 2015 after allegedly trying to record video of women in a restaurant restroom. He said he believes, however, that an effort to make restrooms more accommodating to multiple gender identities would make it easier for such predators. "You put everybody in the same bathroom together, that's what's going to happen," he said.

Carl said his comments didn't relate at all to any expected governmental action in Alabama, at the state or local level.

The post did, however, address alleged federal overreach: "I deal with issues everyday and a hear the same ole story that if we don't do it the way the government requires us to they will cut our funding. FYI: US government you can take your regulation on sharing bathrooms and the funding that goes along with it and plant it where the sun doesn't shine! The well fair of these ladies are my responsibility therefor you can not borrow or print enough money to buy the privacy of my family! Signed Jerry Carl."

Carl represents District 3 on the Mobile County Commission and recently won a hard-fought Republican primary, securing a second term. He currently is the council president, a title that shifts among the three commissioners on a rotating basis.

(Note: This story was updated at 3:20 p.m. with comment from Jerry Carl.)