At a recent City Council meeting, Council member John Chapman pushed back against critics of the city’s new rainbow crosswalks in Old Town celebrating the LGBTQ community.
The crosswalks, a project City Council member Kirk McPike helped spearhead, debuted this year in time for Pride Month. The crosswalks at the intersection of King and Royal streets are a permanent new addition to the city’s streetscape.
Since then, however, the crosswalks have been the target of ire from some of the usual crowd. Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice, for instance, suggested the sidewalks were part of the “trans cult” agenda.
Every day is difficult but June is incredibly hard if you are a parent trying to save your child from the clutches of the trans cult. https://t.co/PTAoH6w2cL
— Tiffany Justice (@4TiffanyJustice) June 10, 2024
Chapman said City Council has also received a number of questions about the rainbow crosswalks’ place in the historic landscape of Old Town.
“I want to be very clear in saying that one of the things you may have understood… we as a city are still talking about our full history,” said Chapman. “We know that we have a number of individuals who would identify with LGBTQIA+ community in the city’s history that have done work in building up this community. It is nothing but recognizing them as part of our whole history that we are doing with this.”
Chapman said some of the language being used about the crosswalks was “out of line.”
“For those individuals who want to demean the opportunity to have this crosswalk, to pay homage to those folks and recognize those folks… is out of line with what we talk about as it relates to historic preservation and recognition of all the individuals who helped build up this community,” Chapman said.
Image via Kirk McPike/Facebook
