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?