Patricia Todd, the first openly gay lawmaker elected to the Alabama legislature, is starting a new LGBTQ advocacy organization called Alabama Equality.

The group will focus on empowering younger leaders and educating people across the state on how certain issues impact Alabamians in the LGBTQ community. Alabama Equality also will hold advocacy trainings across the state to help Alabamians understand the lawmaking process and how to communicate with elected officials.

Todd said several times she hopes to educate instead of shame.

“The only way to win is to educate and to call out, you know, prejudice and discrimination when we see it and hear it,” Todd said in an interview Thursday. “But beating up the opposition does not bring more people to our side. It may fire us up, but it’s not the way that we need to move this in Alabama.”

She said she plans to use her expertise and experience as a former lawmaker — she served in the state House for 12 years — to help equip younger leaders and foster civic engagement across the state.

Todd was first elected to represent Birmingham in 2006. She decided not to run for reelection in 2018. A Florida LGBTQ advocacy organization rescinded a job offer after she tweeted a claim that Gov. Kay Ivey is gay, a comment that an Ivey spokeswoman called a “disgusting lie.”

Todd’s group is different from a former organization, Equality Alabama. She and some other fellow Alabamians discussed the need for another grassroots organization to take its place, and Alabama Equality was born.

She said she expects the group to be “more on defense than offense this year” as it monitors the state legislature, but she hopes to foster civic engagement across Alabama.

Todd said she didn’t see herself stepping back into the legislative sphere. She plans to lead the new organization for about two years while it gets up and running, but said she hopes to step back and let others take the lead.

“A lot of people who are represented by Republicans just think that ‘It wouldn’t do any good, they don’t support us, why waste my time?’ but what they don’t realize is that a couple of personal emails, or phone calls or texts or going their town hall meetings gives a face to the community,” she said.

The advocacy trainings will be free and likely held via Zoom. Todd has held similar statewide trainings before for her job at Jobs to Move America. She said she wants people to know than “an individual can be influential.”

Todd said the group is working on becoming a 501(c)(3) organization. The Alabama Campaign for Adolescent Sexual Health is a current fiscal sponsor.

She said half the organization’s board will be made up of people of color, along with a “high percentage” of trans and nonbinary Alabamians.

“I knew when we won marriage equality in 2015 that the fight wasn’t over, they were just going to divert to something else, and unfortunately, those targets are now against people who identify as transgender,” she said.

She said it’s a difficult issue for some people to come to terms with, but she wants those on the other side of the aisle to be “armed with factual information” before making a decision. Todd also expressed the importance of showing love, including to those who oppose her.

Todd said she remembers younger Alabamians stopping by her office during her time as a lawmaker to tell her it made a difference to “see somebody like them in the State House speaking for them,” and that it’s what keeps her going now.

Her friends have asked her why she chooses to stay in Alabama.

“This is my missionary work and I’ve got to be in one of the hardest places to do it, and that’s the South,” Todd said. “And I love Alabama. I love its people.”