By John Pacenti
Animal Farm and 1984 author George Orwell once wrote, “There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”
When it came to the Delray Beach LGBTQ Pride rainbow intersection, the city showed plenty of fight — putting it in the spotlight as it pushed back against Gov. Ron DeSantis’ edict to erase its symbol of inclusion and tolerance.
DeSantis may have won the battle by using the cover of night for his Department of Transportation to paint over the intersection, but the right-wing governor — who has also targeted the LGBTQ community on other issues — may have lost the war.
Civic engagement was off the charts when it came to the intersection of Northeast Second Avenue and Northeast First Street in downtown’s Pineapple Grove. The haters stayed home. And members of the LGBTQ community showed they are organized and more than ready to stand up for themselves in these times.
“If Gov. DeSantis believed that by literally destroying and covering over public art celebrating the queer community would diminish us, he has clearly failed,” said Rand Hoch, president and founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council.
A feud over art
Municipalities in urban areas started to dedicate intersections or crosswalks to the LGBTQ community after 49 people were gunned down at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
The Delray Beach intersection, with $16,000 from the Human Rights Council, was painted in Pride flag colors in 2021.
In July, DeSantis’ Florida Department of Transportation ordered cities to paint over them, claiming they were unsafe, even though studies showed intersections with public art are generally safer than typical intersections.
The governor’s move backfired spectacularly as FDOT, to treat other such intersections equally, had to paint over all artistic roadway art — like the iconic checkered flag crosswalks near Daytona International Speedway.
In Delray Beach, it was a roller-coaster ride as the LGBTQ community and its allies came out in force during commission meetings and the elected leaders decided to fight the FDOT order in August and exhaust administrative remedies.
There were two special commission meetings in September on the issue, which also spilled over into the commission’s two regular monthly meetings, as television news crews covered Mayor Tom Carney and company like a sporting event.
Commissioners voted on Sept. 9 to file a petition, as Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale had done, to challenge the new state policy — only to pivot and consider other ways to honor the LGBTQ community once the FDOT crews sandblasted and painted over the intersection after their botched first try.
Community reaction
Now the commission is considering other symbolic gestures, such as wrapping light poles in Pride colors, putting a plaque up at the intersection and bathing the water tower in rainbow lights.
“The municipalities where queer public art was destroyed by DeSantis will replace them with bigger, bolder and brighter tributes to the queer community,” Hoch said.
Vice Mayor Rob Long, who made the intersection a public cause, said there was not one speaker who opposed the intersection who came out to commission meetings.
“I thought for sure there’d be a counter protest or something that would happen, there’d be some sort of reaction. And the fact that there was not, it was actually amazing,” Long said.
The critics lurked on community forums dedicated to Delray Beach, posting on the intersection, saying the intersection issue overshadowed their efforts to mourn the death of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed at a college campus event he was headlining.
“We saw more public engagement on this issue than we’ve ever seen, and every single person who got up and spoke about it was in support of freedom of expression and the LGBTQ community,” Long said. “All the haters, all the people who were against it, it just proved their cowardice.”
Commissioner Juli Casale said the issue allowed residents to engage with their government. “Getting involved with how your government operates, especially on a local level, is encouraged,” she said.
In the cover of night
DeSantis struck after Delray Beach filed an administrative motion following a Sept. 2 FDOT hearing in Orlando, with the city seeking the disqualification of FDOT’s presiding officer who had heard the appeal. The city noted communications that showed bias on the part of the hearing officer.
During an overnight downpour in the early morning hours on Sept. 9, FDOT tried to paint over the intersection, but the rain washed it out. Instead, it looked like the state defaced it, as if the biggest monster truck in the world did burnouts on it with the rainbow still visible.
The commission was furious that the botched paint job belied DeSantis’s cover that declaring war on all LGBTQ intersections statewide was in the name of traffic safety.
Commissioner Tom Markert said the intersection was “dirty, messy and dangerous.”
The commission voted 3-1 to join Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach in filing a petition challenging FDOT’s rulemaking authority and seeking to obtain a stay.
Carney voted no, saying he was concerned that DeSantis would punish Delray Beach by withholding $60 million or more in state funding. Casale was not at the meeting.
“As the arts people learned last year, with a stroke of a pen, $100,000 that was coming to the city of Delray evaporated,” said Carney, noting DeSantis vetoed money for arts throughout the state in 2024.
FDOT returned that same night following the commission meeting and repainted the intersection — this time eliminating any hint of a rainbow. So, the commission held another special meeting on Sept. 11, and after much debate, decided to withdraw its decision to seek litigation.
‘Choose your battles’
Commissioners suddenly were channeling Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler, where you need to know “when to fold ’em.”
“Sometimes you got to play the cards you were dealt,” Carney said.
“Sometimes you have to choose your battles. And, you know, maybe this is just not the one at this time,” Commissioner Angela Burns said.
This time, it was Long who was the lone no vote, urging the commission to stick to its earlier decision.
“When I ran for this seat, I did it because I hate bullies. I hate bullying, and I can’t think of a more obvious example of us being bullied and disrespected,” he said.
Long said he is worried that the commission won’t follow through on replacing the Pride intersection with a new LGBTQ symbol — especially since Carney talked about getting private groups to fund the effort.
“They’re waiting for me to be gone so they can virtually do nothing,” he told The Coastal Star. Long is running for a vacant statehouse seat and must resign his commission seat in December after the special election is held.
Carney told this publication that private groups paid for the rainbow intersection and that he is in contact with a number of people on the issue in the LGBTQ community.
“We’re starting the process. We’re going to be coming back with some ideas,” he said. “There’s going to be some interesting stuff coming forward.”
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