CU's Planned Coach McCartney Statue Must Not Proceed

May 29th, 2025

Dear University of Colorado Regents, President Todd Saliman, Chancellor Justin Schwartz, and Athletic Director Rick George,

In 1992, it was legal to discriminate based on sexual orientation throughout Colorado, except in the cities of Aspen, Boulder, and Denver. At that time, a group based in Colorado Springs decided that wasn’t good enough: they put a citizen initiative on the 1992 ballot to make discrimination legal everywhere in Colorado. The group, Colorado for Family Values, found their most prominent spokesman in CU Head Football Coach Bill McCartney, who at the time was the highest paid public official in the State of Colorado.
 
Standing at a University of Colorado podium, McCartney aggressively promoted this political campaign, known as Amendment 2. He said of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Coloradans: “These people don’t reproduce. Yet they want the same rights as people who do reproduce”. At the same CU podium, he also referred to homosexuality as “an abomination against almighty God.” It is difficult to convey the damage these ignorant and offensive words caused both on campus and throughout the state. In their aftermath, the Department of Women’s Studies was painted with Nazi-era pink triangles and queer students reported increased harassment and verbal assaults.
 
With McCartney’s help, Colorado for Family Values scored a touchdown in the November 1992 election when 53% of Colorado voters passed Amendment 2 enshrining bigotry into the Colorado State Constitution. But Amendment 2 was such an egregious violation of the US Constitution, that it was struck down in a 6-3 decision in 1996 as the first of many landmark gay rights victories at the US Supreme Court. In the four years in between, Amendment 2 caused tremendous harm to Colorado’s LGBTQ population and earned us the moniker “Hate State”.
 
Not content with being the national spokesman for an anti-LGBTQ hate movement, McCartney also used Folsom Field to convene the first several annual congregations of the Promise Keepers evangelical group that he founded. Promise Keepers did not hide behind the easy facade of believing that marriage could only exist in heterosexual couples: this all-male group actively denigrated all homosexuality as sinful and demanded a return to patriarchal gender roles. Once characterized by the National Organization for Women as “the greatest danger to women’s rights”, Promise Keepers has not gone quietly into the night but has been revived in the Trump era as an explicitly political movement with connections to James Dobson and Charlie Kirk. 
 
McCartney certainly had a lot to repent for by 1992. After a 7-25-1 start over his first three seasons and attracting an ACLU lawsuit requiring the Regents to amend CU policies, he was somehow still given a contract extension. The road to Colorado’s share of the 1990 Championship ran through McCartney’s locker room culture that even by 1986 had a reputation for protecting players from sexual assault charges. 
 
Now the University intends to allow a statue of Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney to be erected at Folsom Field. Such a statue would be a monument to the man who used his power and platform as a leader at CU to harm thousands of Coloradans and Americans. The University is trying to justify this monument to McCartney by saying that he apologized for what he did to LBGTQ Coloradans. But the words McCartney issued in 2010 as he was campaigning to win back his position as head coach for the Buffaloes were not an apology, they were a denial:

“The Bible says the whole gospel is found in the first two commandments, and those commandments are love God and love your neighbor as yourself,” McCartney said. “What I regret is that I did not communicate that. I don’t judge the gay community, and anybody who gets the impression that I do, that’s just not the truth. I didn’t communicate that well that day, and I regret that. I ask the forgiveness of anyone who thinks I judged them or look down on them. I don’t.”
 
This denial drips with lies. McCartney used his CU position and the evangelical men’s rights group he founded to publicly repeat his homophobic and patriarchal views for years. McCartney’s denial did nothing to repair the damage that he caused in the 1992 election, and for decades afterwards through his Promise Keepers organization. Nobody should be forced to see a monument to this man every time they enter the CU football stadium.
 
Boulder Progressives urges you to reconsider permitting a monument to Bill McCartney anywhere on University of Colorado property. To do so would be contrary to the University of Colorado rules like Regent Law 8 and the values of the CU Boulder campus and the City of Boulder community we share. It is also deeply alienating and offensive to students, staff, Forever Buffs alumni, and CU Buffaloes fans everywhere. We hope that you will hear what is being said by our allies at Rocky Mountain Equality Center, by LGBTQIA+ groups and allies across the city, and by members of the community you directly serve. Please reconsider permitting any monument celebrating an ignored but ugly chapter in our history. Leave McCartney’s troubling legacy in the past so that we can all move forward together.
 
Boulder Progressives Board