Alabama’s first openly gay lawmaker says she is worried an anti-LGBTQ campaign billboard in west Mobile underscores a “disturbing” and “dangerous” national trend against the community in recent months.

Patricia Todd, who served in the Alabama House from 2006-2018, said Thursday she fears the national political trend critical of the LGBTQ community “will increase violence against people who identify as LGBTQ,” and urged the people backing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric to stop.

“I have a range of emotions in all of this from shock to sadness to anger in how they are using the LGBTQ community in this instance of (a special election on) annexation, when it doesn’t have anything to do with that,” said Todd, who current chairs the Alabama Equality political action committee aimed at raising money to support pro-LGBTQ political candidates.

“To me, it demonstrates how low some of these folks will go, I guess, to marginalize and drum up hate against us,” Todd said, adding the billboard represents “a first” she has seen in Alabama in which the LGBTQ community or policies promoting the community was used in such a visual way in a political campaign.

She said the trend has evolving in Alabama over the past month, citing disruptions at Pride events around the state. The most notable occurred in Prattville, when the white supremacist group called Patriot Front showed up and protested the LGBTQ community.

“It’s alarming to me,” Todd said. “It’s immigrants. It’s been people of color. Now it’s the LGBTQ community. There is always a group (that some people) have to hate on. It’s a very dangerous thing to see.”

The billboard in question is sponsored by the organization Faith Family Freedom Coalition Metro Mobile, whose main spokesman with Martin Scott Catino, whose resume includes a stint in the military and as a Fulbright Scholar specializing in security studies. He has not returned repeated calls for comment.

Catino, in interviews with conservative news outlets, said that people should be wary of annexing into a city he claims is supportive of the LGBTQ movement, and one that he believes promotes diversity and inclusion training. The city, last year, hired LGBTQ liaisons as a way to boost the city’s Municipal Equality Index through the Human Rights Campaign.

A representative with the Common Sense Campaign tea party told AL.com on Wednesday that their organization was concerned with the city not responding to their concerns about a LGBTQ-themed Pride Month event during Art Walk.

Todd said she believes much of the backlash has to do with people “fearing what they don’t know.”

“What we do know is when people get to know us, it does change their opinion on who we are,” Todd said. “We are a diverse community, Black and white and Christian and Jew and non-believers. We are rich, poor, highly educated. It’s more diverse than any other ethnicity or race or any other thing.”

Todd, who lives in Birmingham, said she hopes Mobilians “do not tolerate hate” during next week’s election.

“When I got elected, and walked into the statehouse, (lawmakers) thought I would hit them over the head with the gay flag,” Todd said. “We have to learn to talk to each other and share our life experiences. We pay our taxes, mow our grass and have jobs. It’s all the same. We are human beings and we have to love people of the same gender or we don’t believe we were born in the right physical body. What does that have to do with anyone (else)? What does my marriage to a woman have to do with anyone else’s marriage?”