The city of Lexington is preparing for this weekend’s Pride Festival which celebrates members of LGBTQ community, and part of that preparation included painting the crosswalks on Limestone and Short Street rainbow colors. The artist, Royce Gerald Biv, said he was happy to help the city prepare for the festival. “This is a great opportunity for the city,” the artist said, bragging about his work. “It’s really going to spruce up this section of downtown, it brings some fun color and I think it’s a very nice gesture by the city to be part of the Pride Festival. Plus, it’s a crosswalk, no one even uses them, they just cross the street wherever they want. Who would even get mad about a crosswalk?”

The answer, to Biv’s rhetorical question, was found in the comment section of every local media outlet’s story on the aforementioned crosswalks. “I don’t understand why we can have a gay festival but we can’t have a Christian festival,” said one user, Gary Hale, who, according to his Facebook profile had checked into Questapalooza on more than one occasion. Mr. Hale, the same middle-aged white male continued next with the argument that the crosswalk shouldn’t have been changed because of “safety reasons.” Hale explained in King James English, “allow me to cast the first stone for a moment, cross not lest ye can see the standard faded white paint at this downtown crosswalk.”

Hale continued his rant, “look God sent a rainbow to Noah as a promise that he’d never flood the world again, but here we are, about to flood the streets of Lexington with rainbows. It’s blasphemous.”

When reached for comment, Hale acknowledged his white privilege and explained that was why he was able to spend time on the internet making these arguments. “When everything goes right in your life it’s such a blessing, because you then get to focus on the things no one else has the time to, ya know? I just love that I get the chance to focus on the things that don’t matter at all.”