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Statue of McCartney at CU would be an abomination [1]
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Date: 2025-07-24
One of the most prominent bigots in recent Colorado history is a man named Bill McCartney.
The peak of his anti-LGBTQ+ hate came in 1992, when he emerged a key proponent of Amendment 2, which prohibited the state from adopting anti-descrimination protections for gay and lesbian Coloradans. He said homosexuality is “an abomination.”
McCartney was an evangelical preacher. But the main source of his influence was his record as a football coach at University of Colorado Boulder, where he took his 1990 team to the Orange Bowl and won.
It’s for his feats on the field that CU wants to honor McCartney by erecting a statue of the man on the campus of the state’s flagship public university. This would be an abomination, and the statue project should be spiked.
McCartney, who died in January, began coaching at CU in 1982. It wasn’t long before he was conducting prayer with players at games and team meals, drawing objections from critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union. He founded the men-only Christian organization Promise Keepers, which in 1997 gained widespread attention when an event it staged became one of the largest-ever gatherings in Washington, D.C. The group proselytized a model of the “godly man” who embraces his role as faithful head of the household. One of the “promises” this man must make is to practice “sexual purity.” Critics highlighted how the Promise Keepers ethos was denigrating to women.
The group has experienced a resurgence in the age of Trumpism and is squarely aligned with MAGA. It says its mission is to “make dads great again.”
Colorado voters passed Amendment 2 partly due to the measure’s champions, few of whom were as well-known as McCartney. Stumping for the amendment, he stood at a podium on the CU campus and declared homosexuality to be “an abomination against almighty God.”
The measure’s passage, after which Colorado became known as The Hate State, is perhaps the state’s greatest source of shame since the Japanese incarceration camp at Granada during World War II. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1996, and the state has since come a long way, with a gay man elected twice to its highest office and LGBTQ+ protections adopted into state law.
But the episode remains an indelible stain on the state’s legacy. Coloradans should do everything they can to ensure further progress on equality and defend rights already achieved. But a statue for McCartney would lionize a bigot and symbolize a reversal of progress.
In 2010, McCartney attempted an apology, but it was a sorry-you-were-offended sort of gesture that stopped short of affirming the equal humanity of those he had demonized.
“I regret that I gave the impression that I would in any way judge somebody else; I don’t,” McCartney told the Boulder Daily Camera. “I don’t judge anybody. But I can see how that was interpreted, and I’m sorry for that.”
He was angling to get his old coaching job back at the time.
The university notes that the statue, due to be unveiled in the fall, is privately funded, as if to preempt any objection to the use of public money for it. But that’s beside the point. However it’s funded, the statue will tower over countless visitors to Folsom Field as a potent symbol of discrimination.
According to a university list of “all the iconic sculptures” on the Boulder campus, only two people so far have merited memorialization — another football coach, Fred Folsom from the 19th century, and the poet Robert Frost.
If campus leaders want to honor a true local hero with a statue, options abound. How about Clela Rorex, who as the Boulder County clerk in 1975 issued the first same-sex marriage license in the country? She took this courageous act out of “basic human decency,” she said, even as she braved harassment and death threats.
Americans in recent years have realized that monuments to white supremacists and namesake honors for bigots are a disservice to contemporary society and have removed offending specimens.
In 2025, it should be obvious that a public university should take down a monument to someone like McCartney, not put one up.
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https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/07/24/statue-of-mccartney-abomination/
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