Swampscott Paints Over Rainbow Crosswalks, and a Small Town Fight Goes National

A crosswalk is supposed to do one thing: tell a driver to stop and tell a walker where it is safe to cross. In Swampscott, Massachusetts, a seaside town north of Boston, a few cans of plain white paint have turned that simple job into a fight that has reached well beyond the town line.

Late last week, residents found that the rainbow Pride crosswalks at Burrill Street and Monument Avenue had been repainted in standard black and white, according to the local nonprofit newsroom Swampscott Tides. Most outlets, including Boston.com, report that two crosswalks were changed. WCVB put the number at three.

Route 129 eastbound in Swampscott. File photo; not the crosswalks at issue. Photo: John Phelan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (resized).

What the town says happened

In a statement Friday, the town said the restriping was part of its "regularly scheduled maintenance of select roadway markings," Boston.com reported. Officials also took pains to say the work was not a message.

"We want to be clear that this routine maintenance work does not reflect any change in the Town's unyielding commitment to supporting and welcoming our LGBTQIA+ residents, families, and visitors," the town said.

That did not settle things. "Routine maintenance doesn't require painting over colors in black," resident Katie Murphy Arrington wrote in a public Facebook post quoted by Boston.com. Another resident, Melissa Weinand, told WCVB, "I know they're saying it's routine maintenance, but if that's the case then there should have been more discussion about potentially adding the color back."

Residents launched a GoFundMe to pay for putting the rainbows back. As of Tuesday afternoon it had raised $790 of a $5,000 goal, Boston.com reported. Others have chalked rainbows on pavement around town and filed repair requests with the town, Swampscott Tides reported.

By Monday the town had shifted tone. It said it is "reviewing the policies and procedures surrounding roadway markings, including those supported through private donations, to ensure there is a clear and consistent process moving forward," and invited residents to speak at the Select Board's October 21 meeting.

Who paid for the paint

Here is a point worth getting right, because a good deal of the online commentary got it wrong. Posts circulating on X described the rainbow crosswalks as an $8,000 expense of "taxpayer money." The reporting does not support that.

In June 2025, Swampscott Tides reported that Rebecca and Peter Spellios donated the money to repaint nine of the town's ten Pride crosswalks. The contractor, K5 Corporation, did the work for "just south of $8,000," according to then-Interim Town Administrator Gino Cresta. The town's share was expected to be about $800 for the tenth crosswalk. The town itself now says the rainbow paint was "generously donated" and applied outside its regular maintenance schedule.

Christians are told not to bear false witness, and that applies to the people we disagree with as much as anyone. The honest version of this story is not that Swampscott wasted thousands of tax dollars. It is that a town let private donors put a cause on public pavement, and is now finding out what happens when it has to decide whether to keep doing so.

Why it went national

The story jumped from local television to the national conversation on Monday. A widely shared post from the account Libs of TikTok announced that the crosswalks had been "REMOVED and painted over," and Boston 25 News also posted about the story on X.

It also landed in the middle of a national argument that Washington started. In July 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote to every governor asking states to join the Federal Highway Administration's SAFE ROADS initiative. "Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork," Duffy said, adding that intersections and crosswalks should be kept free of "political messages of any nature, artwork, or anything else that detracts from the core mission of driver and pedestrian safety."

That position has roots older than this administration. In 2011 the Federal Highway Administration said crosswalk art was "contrary to the goal of increased safety and most likely could be a contributing factor to a false sense of security for both motorists and pedestrians," as The Daily Signal and Metro Weekly both noted. The Florida Department of Transportation has since ordered cities to remove rainbow crosswalks and more than 400 other roadway decorations, and the Texas Department of Transportation sent local governments a memo directing them to keep crosswalks "free from distractions," The Advocate reported. Critics, including The Advocate, point out that federal officials have not produced crash data tying rainbow crosswalks to injuries.

The question underneath

Swampscott has not said it was following Washington's lead, and there is no reporting that it was. It may well be exactly what it says: a public works crew restriping worn lines the standard way.

But the reaction shows what the rainbow stripes had become. Supporters say so plainly. The GoFundMe says the crosswalks "helped people feel that the town supported them and welcomed them." That is a statement of moral approval, painted on ground every resident has to walk across, including the many families in a town like Swampscott who hold to the historic Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality.

Welcoming every neighbor is a duty, and nobody should be mistreated for how they live. But a town can welcome people without asking all of its residents to endorse a particular view of sex and identity on the public street. Plain white lines say "cross here" to everyone. That is what public pavement is for.

The Select Board takes up the question on October 21. The most useful thing it could do is adopt a simple rule that applies to every cause, popular or not: the road belongs to everyone, so it carries no one's banner.

Photos: John Phelan via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 3.0; file photos of Swampscott, not of the crosswalks.