“It’s not about transgender,” Trayce Bradford, the president of a conservative group called the Texas Eagle Forum, told the Senate committee. “It’s about feeling safe. There has to be some boundaries.”

Ms. Bradford, who said she was stalked and sexually assaulted in college, said conservative activists have been unfairly accused of spreading hate by backing the legislation. “I don’t know of any conservative who wants to serve as the potty police,” she said.

Terry Holcomb, a leader of the Republican Party of Texas who testified in support of the bill, described it as a common-sense issue that has been “deliberately misconstrued and mischaracterized.” Charles Flowers, the senior pastor of Faith Outreach Center International in San Antonio, who was planning to testify but ultimately did not, said he and other ministers have urged their congregations to tell lawmakers to vote in favor of the bill, which he said would leave women and girls “at risk” without its protections.

“It’s not a Democratic or Republican issue,” Mr. Flowers said.

On Sunday, IBM took out full-page ads in major Texas newspapers, saying that the company “firmly opposes” any measure that would harm the state’s gay, lesbian and transgender community and make it harder for businesses to recruit and retain talent.

The next day, the chief executives of 14 Dallas-based companies — including corporate giants like American Airlines, AT&T Inc., Southwest Airlines and Texas Instruments — sent a letter to the governor expressing concern that the bill “would seriously hurt the state’s ability to attract new businesses, investment and jobs.”

And on Wednesday, the presiding officers of the Episcopal Church wrote to the speaker of the Texas House and suggested that if the bill passed, the church would cancel its nine-day General Convention in Austin scheduled for July 2018.

“In 1955, we were forced to move a General Convention from Houston to another state because Texas laws prohibited black and white Episcopalians from being treated equally,” read the letter from Bishop Michael B. Curry and another leader. “We would not stand then for Episcopalians to be discriminated against, and we cannot countenance it now.”