Among the Promise Keepers

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Instructing husbands how to reclaim their manhood, for instance, pastor Tony Evans writes: 'The first thing you do is sit down with your wife and say something like this: 'Honey, I've made a terrible mistake. I've given you my role. I gave up leading this family, and I forced you to take my place. Now I must reclaim that role.' Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm not suggesting that you ask for your role back, I'm urging you to take it back... Be sensitive. Listen. Treat the lady gently and lovingly. But lead!'

That's a stance that spooks feminists. And gays are nervous about the ramifications of the group's position statement that 'homosexuality violates God's creative design for a husband and a wife and... is a sin.' Protests have dogged each summer's Promise Keepers gathering in Boulder, the acrimony coming to a head in 1993 when the group filled Folsom Field for the first time.

What brought out the opposition, I suspect, was not the essays in Seven Promises or even what was being said at the gatherings so much as the controversial politics of Bill McCartney. The charismatic coach first made headlines back in the mid-'80s when he battled the American Civil Liberties Union over his practice of leading the team in pregame prayer. His notoriety reached a peak in 1992 during the debate over Amendment 2, a state ballot question aimed at blocking civil rights guarantees for gays and lesbians. After McCartney authorized the amendment's sponsor, Colorado for Family Values, to use his name and affiliation on its fund-raising letters, the university received complaints about this apparent violation of policy. The coach agreed to ask the anti-gay rights crusaders to drop his name from their printed materials and called a news conference to make the announcement. There, McCartney proceeded to urge Coloradans to support Amendment 2 and termed homosexuality 'an abomination of almighty God.' This prompted campus protests and a reprimand from the university president. U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) called McCartney a 'self-anointed ayatollah.But McCartney seems to be more enigma than ayatollah. At the same time that he was taking his civil rights?denying stance regarding gays, he was a vocal and demonstrative supporter of racial equality -- the only head coach in Division I-A, in fact, to have on his staff as many black coaches as white. And when he resigned in January 1995, and his longtime assistant Bob Simmons was passed over for a less-experienced white replacement, McCartney sided with an unlikely ally, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, in charging racism.

I was guessing that Promise Keepers, McCartney's current focus, was similarly complex. There was only one way to find out what was really going on.

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