The Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, who is running for the gubernatorial nomination, issued a scathing reply to people uncomfortable with sharing a bathroom with a transgender person in 2016, telling them, “If you’ve got that much of a problem, hold it.”

Healey’s retort came in response to critics who slammed legislation that would have enabled transgender people to use a bathroom or locker room that fit their preferred gender identity.

“Healey, in addressing the panel, took aim at those who term the legislation a ‘bathroom bill,’ according to the State House News Service,” the Boston Herald reported in late April 2016.

Andrew Beckwith, then-president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, fired back, “I think it’s hypocritical. People like myself, organizations like the Massachusetts Family Institute that are concerned about the privacy and safety of all women and children … if we made a suggestion (about transgender people), if we said they’re expected to hold it, we would have been called bigots and haters and transphobic.