Houston Mayor Annise Parker on Tuesday lamented defeat of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), putting the blame squarely on a “campaign of fear mongering and deliberate lies.”

While HERO prohibits discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations based on more than a dozen characteristics including race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, opponents who forced it onto Tuesday's ballot kept to a misleading message: The law would give sexual predators pretending to be women access to women's restrooms.

Roughly 60 percent of Houston voters voted against HERO.

“This was a campaign of fear mongering and deliberate lies. Deliberate lies,” Parker told supporters on Tuesday. “This isn't misinformation, this is a calculated campaign of lies designed to demonize a little understood minority, and to use that to take down an ordinance that 200 other cities across America, and 17 states have successfully passed and operated under.”

“They just kept spewing an ugly wad of lies from our TV screens and from pulpits. This was a calculated campaign by a very small but determined group of right-wing ideologues and the religious right. And they know only how to destroy, not how to build up,” she added.

Parker, who is barred from seeking a fourth term, and her administration strongly backed HERO. Voters will decide on a new mayor next month.