A rock near Los Alamos intended to promote celebrations of life is becoming the focus of a gay rights battle during PRIDE month.

The rock is a public canvas for murals, birthday greetings, paintings, and other announcements. Anyone can paint what they please as long as it’s not offensive and normally the messages are untouched for at least 24 hours, according to a KOB report.

But pro-gay messages and PRIDE colors painted on the rock this month have been continually covered by gray paint after only a few hours. The Friends of Los Alamos PRIDE told KOB that whenever they paint messages and announcements supporting LGBTQ+ and announcements for their pride festival, they are quickly covered.

“It was covered within 4 hours,” Kryene Sehorn, a member of the Friends of Los Alamos Pride Board. “They covered it with just gray paint, there wasn’t even a message, just completely dumped over.”

KOB reported that recently, a board member confronted a man painting over the rock with gray paint.

“Anybody can paint the rock,” the man said while being videotaped without identification. The board member replied: “We are supporting the LGBTQ+ community in this town. How dare you try to block us from doing that? Shame on you.”

The man said, “I’m not trying to block you I just don’t think that is an appropriate place for those messages.”

The Pride Board plans to repaint the rock this week, announcing Pride Fest happening in Los Alamos this weekend. “We just feel it is important, particularly for the youth in our community to see there is support and to show it, especially with the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill in Florida recently,” Sehorn said. “Our theme for Pride this year is ‘just say gay’ and keep showing no matter how much they try to silence our organization and queer voices we aren’t going to let that happen.”