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From The Roanoke Times

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RICHMOND -- U.S. Sen. George Allen on Monday adamantly denied an online magazine report in which a former University of Virginia football teammate alleged that Allen, as a college student, often used an inflammatory racial epithet to refer to black people.

"I do not remember ever using that word, and it is completely false for them to say that that was part of my vocabulary then, or since then, or now," Allen said after a news conference in Richmond.

Allen joined a group of Virginia ministers, most of them black, to show support for a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions. After the press conference, several of the ministers defended Allen, and one declared that the Republican senator is a victim of "character assassination" through repeated stories about his attitudes on race.

The online magazine Salon.com published an article Sunday in which UVa graduate Ken Shelton alleged that Allen "used the N-word on a regular basis" during their time together on the football team. Two unnamed former teammates made similar charges in the article.

But the article also stated that seven of 19 former players interviewed for the article had no recollection of Allen demonstrating racist behavior, and seven others said they believed Allen would not have behaved that way. Allen's campaign released statements from four former teammates who said they never saw Allen display prejudice.

Shelton, a radiologist in North Carolina, did not respond to a phone message left at his office Monday. He was a tight end and wide receiver at UVa and played with Allen during the 1972 and 1973 seasons.

Shelton's allegation comes as Allen fights to hold on to his Senate seat against Democratic challenger James Webb.

Allen held a comfortable lead in public-opinion polls until early August, when he used the word "macaca" to identify a camera-toting Webb volunteer of Indian descent during a rally in Southwest Virginia. Allen has apologized repeatedly for the incident and insisted that he was unaware that the term is considered a slur in some cultures.

"I understand that there's a lot of this political attacking that goes on," Allen said. "But I think it's high time that we actually stick to the truth and look at someone's record. Look at my record as governor. Look at my record as United States senator. That's what the people of Virginia ought to look at."

Allen, the son of Hall of Fame football coach George Allen, said he learned the virtues of tolerance from his family and applied them to his college gridiron experience.

"The way I was raised, you don't care about someone's race or their ethnicity or their religion," Allen said. "What you care about is can they catch, can they pass, can they punt, block?"

Charles Hale, a former teammate and longtime friend of Allen and Shelton, said he was "just floored" by the Salon.com piece. Hale, a Grundy native who now lives in Abingdon, said he never heard Allen utter a racial epithet during their college days and never heard anyone else accuse Allen of doing so.

Hale said he saw Shelton at a UVa football game in Charlottesville on Sept. 16.

"We had a great time, and he didn't say anything about this," Hale said in a telephone interview.

Allen also denied Shelton's claim that he stuffed the severed head of a deer into a mailbox in a black neighborhood after a hunting outing in the mid-1970s.

"The deer-head story is another pure fabrication, absolutely false," said Allen, who guessed he has not spoken to Shelton in 32 years.

Bishop Gerald Glenn, the pastor of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield County, said Allen issued an appropriate apology for his "macaca" comment and said Allen's attitudes on race should not be an issue in the campaign.

"I think what's happening is character assassination, blatant and unparalleled," said Glenn, who acknowledged that he differs with Allen on issues such as the war in Iraq.

Glenn and other ministers attending Monday's press conference at Richmond's Brown's Island joined Allen in supporting the proposed constitutional amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot. Allen said the amendment is needed to protect Virginia's ban on same-sex marriages from court challenges.

"So often what we see is our foundational values in our representative democracy are being thwarted and ignored by unelected, appointed-for-life federal judges," Allen said.

Webb opposes the constitutional amendment, arguing that it would reach beyond the issue of marriage and could affect certain legal arrangements between unmarried individuals. Webb spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd said the issue "is going to be used to divide people."