Along-delayed bill that would allow transgender people to use the restroom of their choice appears finally to be nearing a vote in the state House of Representatives, after the measure overwhelmingly passed the Senate on Thursday. While legislators unnecessarily agonize over the basic civil accommodation, it already is receiving unqualified support every day across Massachusetts — in Target department stores.

Citing “recent debate about proposed laws in several states [that] has reignited a national conversation around inclusivity,’’ the nation’s second-biggest retailer said last month that its customers and employees are welcome to “use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.’’ Since then, the chain has faced criticism from those who seek to equate transgender rights with sketchy men invading women’s restrooms for sinister purposes. It’s a tactic rooted in fear, and discrimination. Opponents of Target’s policy have been unable to produce any evidence of inappropriate behavior by a transgender person in a store restroom. Their lurid online tales of “bathroom predators’’ are pure fiction.

Still, the backlash against Target has led to demonstrations in Florida, Mississippi, Utah, and other states, and a report of an “active shooter’’ at an Illinois Target that turned out to be an unarmed man creating a disturbance over the restroom policy. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote a letter to the retailer asking it to detail “safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from those who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes.’’ Meantime, the conservative American Family Association has collected more than 1.1 million signatures calling for a boycott of Target, a protest whose impact is thus far unclear, and will likely quickly fizzle. Visits to several Boston-area Target stores in recent days revealed that customers were — big surprise — shopping.

So far, Target has given no indication that it will cave in to the hysterics of a misguided minority. In fact, the company pointed out that its April statement was merely a reiteration of a longstanding practice, not some brave new stand.

This also isn’t the first time corporations have tried to move the needle on a civil rights issue. Many companies have stopped spending money in North Carolina, where a law denying equal access to public restrooms has now escalated into a legal battle between the state and the US Justice Department. Last year, 379 firms and employer groups — Target among them — signed a friend-of-the-court brief that was filed with the US Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage. And following Target’s lead in calling attention to its restroom policy, several other major companies — including Starbucks, Saks Fifth Avenue parent Hudson Bay Co., and Barnes & Noble — have trumpeted their own inclusive policies for restroom use. It’s an encouraging trend, one that perhaps is building momentum for a day when equal access might just be business as usual.