Ten Years After Pulse, We Remember The 49 And Refuse To Let Their Memory Be Painted Over
Written by Peter Boykin on June 12, 2026
Ten Years After Pulse, We Remember The 49 And Refuse To Let Their Memory Be Painted Over
#GoRightNews Shared by Peter Boykin
American Political Commentator / Citizen Journalist / Activist / Constitutionalist for Liberty
Ten Years After Pulse, We Remember The 49 And Refuse To Let Their Memory Be Painted Over
A Go Right News and Gays For Liberty Memorial Reflection
Ten years ago, Orlando was shattered.
On June 12, 2016, at 2:02 in the morning, Pulse nightclub became the scene of horror during Latin Night. Forty-nine beautiful souls were taken. Dozens more were wounded. Families were broken. Survivors were changed forever. A city that had been dancing, laughing, loving, and living freely suddenly became a symbol of grief felt across America and around the world.
Pulse was not just a nightclub. For many, it was family. It was refuge. It was one of those places where people who had been rejected elsewhere could finally breathe. It was a place where gay Americans, Latino Americans, friends, loved ones, and allies could gather without needing to explain why they belonged.
That is why Pulse still matters.
That is why the memorial matters.
That is why the rainbow crosswalk outside the site mattered.
And that is why painting over it was wrong.
Orlando remembers. The families remember. The survivors remember. The people who stood in blood donation lines remember. The first responders and trauma teams remember. The gay community remembers. And whether some people on the right want to admit it or not, gay conservatives should remember too.
Because Pulse was not a left-wing issue. Pulse was not a campaign slogan. Pulse was not some activist talking point to be mocked by people who are tired of rainbow politics. Pulse was a massacre. Forty-nine Americans were murdered. Many of them were gay. Many of them were Latino. All of them were human beings made in the image of God and deserving of dignity.
There is a difference between rejecting radical left-wing politics and becoming so bitter that you lose the ability to honor your own dead.
That is a hard thing to say, but it needs to be said.
Inside some gay Republican spaces, including groups built to prove that gay Americans do not belong to the Democrat Party, there are people who have become so angry at left-wing gays who rejected them that they now dismiss anything connected to gay remembrance as liberal nonsense. I understand the hurt. Many gay conservatives have been mocked, shunned, insulted, and treated like traitors by the left. I know that pain personally. But pain cannot become permission to forget Pulse.
We cannot allow our resentment toward one side of politics to blind us to what happened on June 12, 2016.
We cannot say we are for freedom, faith, family, and country, then shrug when a memorial connected to 49 murdered Americans is painted over in the middle of the night.
The rainbow crosswalk outside Pulse was not just “paint on the road.” It was installed after the tragedy as a public act of remembrance. It became part of the living memory of that place. People walked across it to grieve. Families saw it as a sign that their loved ones had not been forgotten. Survivors saw it as a message that Orlando still stood with them.
Then the state came in and painted it over.
No real conversation with the community. No real respect for the families. No real recognition that this was not some random piece of pavement. It was tied to one of the darkest nights in modern American history.
The excuse was safety. The excuse was standardization. The excuse was that roads should not be used for political messages.
But if safety was the true concern, why was this handled with such disregard for the city and the people who live with this grief? If saving money was the concern, why spend money removing what the local community had already paid for and then keep spending money to wash away chalk? If neutral government was the concern, why did the state treat a memorial as if it were a campaign sign?
There is nothing neutral about erasing remembrance.
And yes, Ron DeSantis deserves criticism for this.
This is not about left or right. This is about decency. DeSantis has made a habit of turning gay Americans into political targets when it benefits him. His campaign once tried to attack Donald Trump for being supportive of LGBTQ Americans. That was not strength. That was not conservatism. That was political cruelty dressed up as toughness.
Donald Trump stood on a Republican National Convention stage after Pulse and said he would protect LGBTQ citizens from violence and oppression. That should never have been mocked by another Republican. Protecting Americans from violence is not a gay issue. It is the basic duty of government.
Yet too many gay Republicans still praise DeSantis as if he has been some great defender of liberty. Defender of whose liberty? A government that can paint over a local memorial because it dislikes the symbol is not defending liberty. It is imposing power from the top down.
That is not conservative.
That is not local control.
That is not respect for the people.
That is government force being used to make the public square colder, flatter, and more obedient.
The state can claim it only wants standardized crosswalks, but the reality is bigger than that. Across Florida, rainbow crosswalks and other colorful public markings were targeted and removed. The message received by many gay Americans was simple: your symbols are unwanted, your grief is inconvenient, and your visibility must be scrubbed away.
And for what?
What is so dangerous about color?
What is so offensive about a rainbow?
Christians often remind us that the rainbow is God’s covenant. Then why does the rainbow become a threat the moment gay Americans stand beneath it? If the rainbow belongs to God, then no politician owns it, no activist owns it, and no bureaucrat has the moral authority to treat it like poison on pavement.
The problem was never the rainbow.
The problem is the hatred some people attach to it.
That is why the chalkers matter.
Every day, ordinary people have gone back to that crosswalk with chalk and put the rainbow back. Rain washes it away. Crews wash it away. They come back. The state tries to make the colors disappear. The people return with more color.
That is not vandalism in the moral sense. That is witness.
That is remembrance.
That is a promise.
It says, “You may paint over the road, but you will not paint over the dead.”
It says, “You may erase the colors, but you will not erase the 49.”
It says, “You may call this politics, but we call it memory.”
Gays For Liberty exists because gay Americans should not have to choose between our constitutional rights and our political beliefs. We should not have to bow to the left to be treated as human. We should not have to stay silent on the right to be accepted as conservative. We should be able to say that radical gender ideology has gone too far, that children should be protected, that public indecency should be rejected, and still say without apology that gay Americans deserve equal dignity under the Constitution.
Those things are not contradictions.
They are common sense.
Pulse should be one of those places where politics steps aside. It should be a place where conservatives, liberals, independents, Christians, Jews, atheists, gay Americans, straight Americans, and everyone in between can stand still for a moment and remember that real people died there.
Not slogans.
People.
Amanda Alvear.
Darryl Roman Burt II.
Angel L. Candelario-Padro.
Juan Chevez-Martinez.
Luis Daniel Conde.
Cory James Connell.
Tevin Eugene Crosby.
Deonka Deidra Drayton.
Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez.
Leroy Valentin Fernandez.
Mercedez Marisol Flores.
Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz.
Juan Ramon Guerrero.
Paul Terrell Henry.
Frank Hernandez.
Miguel Angel Honorato.
Javier Jorge-Reyes.
Jason Benjamin Josaphat.
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice.
Anthony Luis Laureano Disla.
Christopher Andrew Leinonen.
Alejandro Barrios Martinez.
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool.
Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez.
Kimberly Morris.
Akyra Monet Murray.
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo.
Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez.
Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera.
Joel Rayon Paniagua.
Jean Carlos Mendez Perez.
Jean Carlos Nieves Rodriguez.
Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado.
Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz.
Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan.
Edward Sotomayor Jr.
Shane Evan Tomlinson.
Martin Benitez Torres.
Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega.
Juan P. Rivera Velazquez.
Luis S. Vielma.
Franky Jimmy DeJesus Velazquez.
Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon.
Jerald Arthur Wright.
Leroy Valentin Fernandez.
And every life, every family, every survivor, every friend, every first responder, and every person who still carries the weight of that night.
This is why the memorial matters.
This is why the crosswalk matters.
This is why Orlando matters.
It is not because paint has more value than people. It is because people give symbols their meaning. A flag is cloth until a nation bleeds for it. A cross is wood until faith gathers around it. A memorial is stone, steel, flowers, names, and color until grief turns it into sacred ground.
Pulse is sacred ground.
And a government that understands that would not have treated its memorial crosswalk like an inconvenience.
Ten years later, we remember the 49 beautiful souls. We remember the survivors. We remember the families. We remember Orlando United. We remember that hate did not win then, and it must not win now.
For gay conservatives, this anniversary is also a test.
Can we reject left-wing extremism without rejecting gay remembrance?
Can we defend children without attacking gay adults?
Can we oppose radical politics without pretending Pulse was just another culture war prop?
Can we be Republicans and still have the courage to say Ron DeSantis was wrong?
I say yes.
We must say yes.
Because if we cannot defend the memory of 49 murdered Americans simply because the memorial includes a rainbow, then our politics has become smaller than our humanity.
When A Rainbow Becomes A Test Of Memory
The Go Right With Peter Boykin Perspective
I founded Gays For Trump and helped build gay conservative spaces because I believed, and still believe, that gay Americans do not belong to the left by default. We are citizens of this Constitutional Republic. We have the right to think for ourselves, vote for ourselves, worship or not worship for ourselves, and live without being forced into someone else’s political box.
But I did not build these spaces so gay conservatives could become numb to our own history.
I did not build these spaces so people could use their anger at left-wing activists as an excuse to mock Pulse, ignore Pulse, or dismiss the importance of a memorial tied to 49 murdered people.
There are people in our own circles who need to hear this plainly. You do not have to like Pride Month. You do not have to support every activist group. You do not have to agree with the modern LGBTQ political machine. But you should still have enough decency to honor Pulse.
You should still understand why the crosswalk mattered.
You should still understand why painting over it hurt people.
And you should still understand why the chalkers keep coming back.
That crosswalk was not about forcing an agenda on anyone. It was about remembering a wound that never fully healed. It was about showing families that their loved ones were not forgotten. It was about telling survivors that their pain still mattered. It was about telling the world that the 49 were more than a headline.
Ron DeSantis failed that test.
The state failed that test.
And some people in our own movement failed that test too.
But we do not have to keep failing it.
We can be better than the left’s identity politics and better than the right’s selective cruelty. We can reject extremism while defending dignity. We can say no to radicalism and yes to remembrance. We can stand for the Constitution, for local communities, for freedom of expression, and for the basic truth that government should not erase memorials because a symbol makes politicians uncomfortable.
The rainbow at Pulse does not belong to the left.
The memory of the 49 does not belong to the left.
Gay Americans do not belong to the left.
And grief should not be forced through a partisan filter before it is allowed to be respected.
Ten years after Pulse, my message is simple.
Remember the 49.
Honor the survivors.
Respect the families.
Restore the rainbow.
And never let politics paint over the truth.
Ten years after the Pulse nightclub massacre, GoRightNews and Gays For Liberty remember the 49 beautiful souls taken in Orlando and condemn the state’s decision to paint over the rainbow memorial crosswalk. This is not about left or right. It is about memory, dignity, local control, and refusing to let politics erase sacred ground.
#GoRight #GoRightNews #GaysForLiberty #GaysForTrump #Pulse #Pulse49 #OrlandoUnited #NeverForgetPulse #WeWillNotBeErased #RestoreTheRainbow #ConstitutionalRights #GayConservatives #LGBTQConservatives #LocalControl #FreedomOfExpression #RememberThe49
[1]: https://gorightnc.com/erasing-the-rainbow-the-battle-over-pulse-memory-and-the-politics-of-remembrance/ “Erasing the Rainbow: The Battle Over Pulse, Memory, and the Politics of Remembrance – Go Right News”
[2]: https://www.pulseorlando.org/Home “Home Pulse Orlando”
[3]: https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2026/06/10/pulse-rainbow-crosswalk- “Controversy at crosswalk at Pulse Memorial continues “
[4]: https://abcnews.com/Politics/desantis-campaign-touts-draconian-lgbtq-record-trump-gay/story?id=100595946 “DeSantis campaign touts his ‘draconian’ LGBTQ record vs. Trump; gay conservatives denounce him – ABC News”
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