So which is it, a safety issue, or a "political ideology" issue?

And since when has a group of people existing been a "political ideology"?

If rainbow sidewalks were actually unsafe, the engineers would know it already (because that's their fucking job) and wouldn't need a goddamned politician to tell them.

That's 100% proof by itself (as if we needed any more) that Abbott is a bigot and a liar.

It's an issue for the safety of his fragile worldview and values.

So far Austin has sworn to comply and SAN ANTONIO has refused! Cant believe we lost Austin first!!

America’s war on color continues.

Waiting for them to ban rainbows from kindergartens.

The Texas governor is a safety issue

Good riddance, those rainbow crosswalks jumped me stole my wallet, and dressed me up as a woman 6 times last week.

"Texans expect their taxpayer dollars to be used wisely," which apparently means removing already existing crosswalks and making new ones, for no other reason than the manbaby is afraid of rainbows.

Terrified of a rainbow.

Also, unmarked crosswalks are perfectly safe because drivers know pretty much every intersection has an implied crosswalk whether marked or not. This comment has been brought to you by the letter S and viewers like you.

Lol I'm sure this is about safety and not a guy trying to feed a bunch of haters red meat so they don't look at the death rates in texas hospitals

Damn right they're a safety issue.

I was crossing one the other week. Boom. Gay. Just like that. Had to get a divorce and everything.

This is just embarrassing.

What's a real "safety issue" is this nazi fucking regime.

I wish my town had a gay cross walk, so then there would be more gay people. Rainbows make people gay and gay people throw great parties and have nice communities. I need that shit in my town.

I kind of suspect that it's not safety driving his concern

this isn't exactly something that would warrant state-level concern

but I do think that it's a bad precedent to be modifying street markings for political reasons.

• I doubt that this particular incident is likely all that risky, but if it becomes normalized to modify street markings, someone sooner or later is going to do something that they think is clever and really does muck up drivers.

• This stuff goes both ways. If you have the left modifying street markings and it's let stand, it's not as if streets are some sort of left-exclusive forum. You can be pretty sure that if this sort of thing is let stand, then the right is going to do so too. I'm pretty confident that if someone started painting anti-LGBTQ markings on streets, plenty of people here would be pretty unhappy. I don't really want political discourse to wind up being who is willing to throw more graffiti down.

It should be possible to find plenty of places in Austin that are okay with putting up signs or murals

things that aren't street markings

that are pro-LGBT messages. That avoids the whole issue that they're arguing over.

kagis

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/inclusive-church-turns-hateful-graffiti-into-pride-mural-we-make-beautiful-things-out-of-the-dust/

After an LGBTQ+-inclusive church in Austin, Texas, was vandalized on Thursday, the community came together to transform the act of hate into something beautiful.

The vandals tore down the Pride flag at Life in the City UMC and graffitied “Pride was the 1st sin” on the front of the building. Afterward, volunteers joined the church for a “creative restoration project” to transform the graffiti into a mural featuring two Progress Pride flags flanking the church doorway.

I really think that this is a better approach if one wants to put out a message.

EDIT: Also, on purely-pragmatic grounds, I suspect that the road surface is probably about the most wear-heavy place to paint something. Like, paint something on a wall, and it doesn't have vehicle tires tearing it up and requiring frequent repainting to look decent.

EDIT2: You can even see a mural on a building about ten feet behind the rainbow crosswalk in the article's picture. Which one looks in better condition to you, the crosswalk or the mural?

Look. I don't disagree on the safety thing. We chose white reflective lines for high contrast and visibility for what it is. We don't paint our stop signs brown or green, and we don't wear blue high-vis vests.

The crosswalk is a bad thing to colour up. I like what the Iceland solution was:

Anyway, here I've gone and agreed with a Republican and suggested safety markings should be consistent, so get with the downvoting.

Edit: I love the new math where I can agree with a time a republican was accidentally sensible while celebrating AN ENTIRE RAINBOW ROAD painted by people in one of the best countries in the world, and I'm fielding downvotes. Don't ever change, redd-uh, Lemmy.