A CU Boulder Athletics dedication for a new statue of Coach Bill McCartney was quietly protested by LGBTQ+ advocates on Nov. 21. LGBTQ+ organizations have said the statue inappropriately elevates McCartney’s political legacy of opposing LGBTQ+ rights.
CU leadership approved the statue, which is fully funded by private donors, in 2023, saying it commemorates McCartney’s 12 years as a coach. McCartney led the CU Boulder football program from 1982 to 1994. His statue has been installed at the CU Boulder practice fields, east of Folsom Field. CU staff did not allow journalists into the private event on the practice fields Friday night.
The statue has prompted backlash because McCartney was the founder of a men’s Christian organization called the Promise Keepers that opposed gay marriage, and an outspoken advocate for Colorado for Family Values’ ballot measure in 1992 — Amendment 2 — which prevented municipalities from enacting anti-discrimination laws protecting gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
The amendment earned Colorado the nickname “the hate state” before it was overturned by the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling four years later. During this time, McCartney called homosexuality “an abomination against almighty God” during a speech at CU. He also butted heads with women’s rights groups, once calling the National Organization for Women as “the greatest danger to women’s rights.”
His advocacy and coaching role also sometimes blurred. McCartney was sued by the ACLU in 1985 for continuing to lead team prayers against university policy, and the Promise Keepers held a few gatherings at Folsom Field. McCartney eventually quit coaching to focus on his work with the organization.
Members of the football community have long celebrated McCartney’s legacy as a coach. He took CU Boulder to bowl games nine of the years he coached and remains the “winningest coach in Colorado history,” according to ESPN. When he died this January, Deion Sanders — “Coach Prime” — posted a tribute on X, writing, “He produced great football players but better men.”
Regional voices, including Rocky Mountain Equality, the Boulder Progressives and the editor of Colorado Newsline, have condemned the statue, which CU Boulder representatives have emphasized is about celebrating McCartney’s football legacy. In comments to the Colorado Sun, they also said that McCartney had apologized publicly for statements he made about LGBTQ people, saying: “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. What I regret is that I did not communicate that.”
LGBTQ+ community members and advocates, Rocky Mountain Equality members and CU alumni and faculty — including members of the Queer & Trans Studies Department — quietly protested outside the commemoration event on Friday evening. In the months leading up to the statue’s construction, the group circulated a petition opposing it, writing that “a statue isn’t a footnote — it’s a monument.”
“We’re here not to protest, so much as to mourn,” said Mark Lester, a policy analyst for Rocky Mountain Equality and a recent CU Boulder graduate. “We’re deeply disappointed in CU Boulder Athletics and just the fact that they’re choosing to commemorate someone who actively fought against our rights and our recognition, both in Colorado and nationwide.”
Several of the protesters, including David Ensign and Michael Mills, had been protesting Bill McCartney and his anti-LGBTQ+ comments and policies since they were students at CU Boulder in the ’90s.
Ensign is now the board treasurer of the Rocky Mountain Equality Action Fund, and Mills is a board member for the Boulder Progressives. Mills said he’s lived in Boulder since 1990 — the year he both started grad school at CU and came out as gay.
In the clipping above: Mike Mills and his friend Vincent Cauley were arrested after protesting a Colorado for Family Values event in Denver in 1992. Courtesy of Mike Mills, along with the other clippings, posters and photos.
“Right after that, the coach of the football team, Bill McCartney, who was at the time the highest-paid public official in the State of Colorado, stood at a CU podium and said that homosexuality is an abomination against Almighty God,” Mills said. “I did obviously feel hurt, but I also channeled that into activism.” He said that he organized protests against the Promise Keepers and was once arrested for staging a “die-in” at a Colorado for Family Values event in Denver. He also was responsible for several flyers mocking and critiquing McCartney for his comments about LGBTQ+ people.
Glenda Russell, a former CU Boulder psychology faculty member, said events like this have “mental health consequences for LGBTQ+ people, not just in Boulder, but all over the place,” calling it “dehumanizing and hurtful.”
The event commemorating McCartney appeared to be attended by donors and members of the CU football community.
“We understand that for many, separating the individual from the totality of their actions may be difficult, and we are confident that the placement of the statue will contemplate this full history,” a CU Boulder representative wrote in emails obtained by Boulder Reporting Lab.
I don’t like football and disdained McCartney’s religious views, but if the usual suspects want to spend their own money on a pigeon roost I would demean myself by opposing it.