The Florida street that exposes America’s growing homophobia

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• I told Trump over dinner he didn’t have my loyalty – it sealed my fate
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• The men who want to stop women voting
• Trump isn’t damaging America. He’s reinventing it’

The colourful crossing on Orange Avenue in Orlando, Florida, was, for years, a sign that the LGBTQ+ community was seen and valued after 49 people were killed and dozens injured in a horrific shooting at the nearby Pulse nightclub on 12 June, 2016.

Then, one quiet night last summer, the rainbow disappeared. The state government painted over the colours, with its Republican Governor and Donald Trump ally Ron DeSantis posting on X: “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”

Before turning his attention to Florida’s roads, just a few years prior, DeSantis introduced a law banning LGBTQ-inclusive education in the state’s classrooms — the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill — and books containing LGBTQ+ themes remain banned in school libraries, deemed “harmful to minors.”

This latest move triggered fury and grief, and deep scepticism towards the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), citing road traffic safety for the removal.

“That crosswalk was more than paint. It was a public, physical acknowledgement in the middle of Orlando that this happened here, to us,” says Joshua McGill, a survivor of the Pulse attack, told The i Paper.

McGill, a 26-year-old nursing student at the time of the shooting, used his medical expertise to rush to the aid of the wounded, ripping off his own shirt to apply a tourniquet to bartender Rodney Sumter, saving his life. “For me, seeing the rainbow colours on the street where so many of us walked made grief visible. It told me the city wasn’t going to pave over the memory,” says McGill, now 36. “It was a place strangers would see every day and maybe ask, ‘Why is this here?’ That question keeps the story alive.”

McGill says the crosswalk’s removal left him feeling “gutted” but more profoundly, “erased”.

For many, the removal is a symbol of how this community has been marginalised and their rights politicised in the 10 years since Trump first became US President. Under him, they have seen specialised mental health services for LGBTQ+ youth ended, the removal of protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, Pride flags banned from government buildings and public schools and schools asked to turn over inclusive resources. The transgender community, in particular, has been most affected by Trump, who introduced a ban on transgender military personnel and curtailed gender-affirming healthcare.

“The removal of public symbols like rainbow crosswalks fits a broader pattern: making queer visibility conditional,” says McGill.

But around the US, LGBTQ+ activists are resisting erasure. In the 10 months since the Pulse memorial was painted over, James Houchins has been on Orange Avenue nearly every day, chalking the colours of the rainbow back onto the crosswalk.

He says he was left “angry and hurt” by the crossing’s removal, “so I brought chalk and [began] to colour.”

Houchins’ act of resistance has not been without personal detriment. He says he was arrested in November 2025 by the Florida Highway Patrol, accused of “damaging and defacing” state property. In April, the Florida State Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute, saying the Florida Highway Patrol could not prove permanent damage to the pavement because the activists had used chalk that was easy to wash off.

“I have sacrificed so much continuing to fight, but this is deeply important to me, and I will continue to fight until the colours are painted back,” says Houchins, who claims he has also received threats and experienced people contacting his place of employment in an effort to derail his career.

“We are still here and still chalking,” he adds. “We will not allow hate to win … we will not allow this state or country to destroy us.”

According to FBI figures, crimes over sexual orientation, perceived or otherwise, were the third-most reported type of hate crime in the US in 2024, only behind race/ethnicity and religion. GLAAD, meanwhile, reported a five per cent increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in 2025 — tracking 1,042 incidents, or nearly 2.9 per day.

Some 1,000 miles from Orlando, the sidewalks of San Antonio, Texas, have also become a battleground in the culture war between red-leaning state legislators and the city’s LGBTQ+ residents.

In October 2025, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, like DeSantis, ordered the removal of rainbow crossings, similarly claiming to want to depoliticise the state’s streets and pointing to road safety. Similar to his Florida counterpart, Abbott has a history of dismissing the LGBTQ+ community, directing state agencies to reject “woke gender ideologies” and affirming that Texas “recognises only two sexes — male and female”, toeing the party line set out in a January 2025 executive order from Trump.

This time, Abbott went as far as to threaten Texas cities that refused to comply with his edict to remove the colour from their crossings with “the withholding or denial of state and federal road funding”.

That proved too alarming a risk for San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who told The New York Times in May that while she appreciated “what our rainbow sidewalks represent … I have to think about the consequences for everyone if our governor were to take away critical funding over this issue”.

“The rainbow crosswalks were for us, like they are in many cities, a kind of cultural signpost as well as a welcome mat,” says Ben Harrell, an assistant economics professor at San Antonio’s Trinity University and a member of the city’s official LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, who watched the city’s colourful crosswalks disappear earlier this year. “I was both enraged and determined to resist with everything in my being.”

In response, San Antonio City Council member Jalen McKee-Rodriguez devised an alternative: instead of painting crosswalks, paint pedestrian sidewalks – which are not under the state’s jurisdiction – in the city’s Pride Cultural Heritage District, one of America’s rare neighbourhoods dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community.

“The LGBTQ+ Advisory Board hosted a ribbon-cutting for the new rainbow sidewalks back in March, and everyone came,” Harrell says. “The community really came out in force. I haven’t felt unity in resistance like that since we won marriage equality. It was pure magic.”

Not everyone supports the city’s rainbow pavements. In January, conservative city council members Marc Whyte and Misty Spears decried the use of an estimated $170,000 (£129,000) in public money to fund the project. “I believe the elimination of the rainbow crosswalks was an important roadway safety decision made by the state of Texas and not intended to target San Antonio or the LGBTQ community,” Spears said at the time. “Protected free speech is what makes America the best country in the world. However, tax dollars should not fund individual viewpoints.”

Hector Barrera, Harrell’s colleague on the city’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, described by the New York Times as leaning conservative, agreed with that position. “Who draws the line and who gets city funds to paint whatever they want on the sidewalks?” he told the newspaper.

Says Harrell, “Hector is a valued colleague, but he and I disagree on this,” arguing, “Public art is an important expression of the cultural identity of any city.”

As the world celebrated Pride month in June, rainbow colours covered America’s streets. But when the month ends, “Many of us feel that visibility is being chipped away again, legislatively and culturally,” says McGill, the Pulse survivor.

“Survivors already carry invisible wounds — when visible symbols disappear, it sends a message, whether intended or not: ‘Move on’. But we don’t get to move on. And we shouldn’t have to justify why remembrance matters.”

Harrell adds: “Every scrap of progress, whether it’s marriage equality or rainbow crosswalks, has been paid for with the blood, sweat and tears of all those who came before us.

“If you want to be inspired by LGBTQ+ people fighting back, look to places you might not expect: look to rural communities hosting their first Pride parades, look to immigrant communities being out and proud when it could cost them everything, and look to cities like San Antonio that find ways to both resist and throw a little shade in the process.”

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