Libraries aren’t usually a breeding ground for homophobia – but for one lesbian couple, their local library has become a not-so-safe space.

The couple, in their seventies, had visited the Jimmie B Keel Library in Tampa, Florida for a Hillsborough County Women’s Democratic Club meeting.

But when they returned to their car, they were greeted with a vile note.

Here’s what the delightful letter read…

“Dear Madam, please don’t take this personally,” it began. “But please know there are people like me who thoroughly despise and detest your screwed up notions of equality, as clearly represented by the equality sticker on the back of your car.

“Thank you for self-identifying. We had enough of that crap under the despicable Obama administration and we are not going to tolerate the same of worse under Hilary’s jack-booted oppression,” the note continued.

It added: “We voted for Trump in droves, and will do so again in four years. Regards, John Q. Republican”.

Why were these women targeted?

We can all agree that harassing older people is the one of the least cool things a person can do (you know who you are), but why were these two singled out?

The women – who didn’t want to appear on camera to discuss the note – said that they thought they may have been targeted because of an equality sticker on their car.

“This can not go on,” said a friend

Patty Cohn, who was with the pair at the library, told ABC Action News that the letter was “nasty” and “cowardly”.

“These women are in their mid-seventies one needs a cane to walk, they were parked in a handicapped parking spot,” added Cohn.

“This can not go on. People can not be targeted because of who they are,” she added. “We don’t know who wrote this nasty letter to them, but obviously it was a coward.”

Was any action taken?

Library staff members were alerted to the note but took no action, saying that it was a private matter between two people with opposing views.

Cohn said the libraries security cameras didn’t show who left the note on the windshield, and the couple never called law enforcement after their grim discovery.

However, the Hillsborough County Women’s Democratic Club, who the women were attending a meeting with, said they were planning a public way to support their comrades.

“They weren’t just attacking those two elderly women; they were attacking all the people who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those women,” said Cohn.

Trump’s election has sparked other hateful messages

Hateful notes like these have spiked in occurrence since the election of Donald Trump as President.

Last November, A Presbyterian minister found a note on his windscreen in the wake of the Trump election win that threatened that his same-sex marriage would be taken away.

Randy Lee Webster is a minister of faith and worship at the First Presbyterian Church in Burlington Iowa.

The note read: “So, father homo. How does it feel to have Trump as your president?

“At least he’s got a set of balls. They’ll put marriage back where God wants it and take yours away. America’s gonna take care of your faggity [sic] ass.”

And another pro-Trump note that attacked LGBT rights was left on someone else’s car.

The note, written on a scrap of paper, read: “time for faggots to go back where they belong. Trump is president now. No more marriage. No more rights. No more faggots.”