All I want is to be able to change the color of a bullet in a list to a light gray. It defaults to black, and I can't figure out how to change it.
I know I could just use an image; I'd rather not do that if I can help it.
The bullet gets its color from the text. So if you want to have a different color bullet than text in your list you'll have to add some markup.
Wrap the list text in a span:
<ul>
<li><span>item #1</span></li>
<li><span>item #2</span></li>
<li><span>item #3</span></li>
</ul>
Then modify your style rules slightly:
li {
color: red; /* bullet color */
}
li span {
color: black; /* text color */
}