A postal worker and a small business owner are the men behind the conservative group that has been the loudest voice in opposing table games in West Virginia.

Ever since lawmakers started talking about clearing a path for table games at the state's four racetracks, the West Virginia Family Foundation has been beating the anti-table games drum.

Kevin McCoy, the group's president and a 21-year employee of the U.S. Postal Service in Charleston, appears in just about every news item related to table games denouncing them as a scourge on the state's family values.

Chairman Ray Lambert is less visible, as is the eight-member board of directors.

A retired Beckley firefighter and born-again Christian, Lambert's time is wrapped up in running American Airworks, the Sophia business he started in 1979.

The company sells high-pressure breathing equipment to firefighters, mostly through its vast Web site.

In their free time, McCoy and Lambert lead the charge to return to state to what they say is its conservative roots through a biblical worldview.

McCoy said the group has about 20,000 supporters through its Web site, although only 10 people primarily manage the day-to-day functions.

The group already has taken on the table games bill in the state Supreme Court. That bid was unsuccessful, so now it plans to file a suit in federal court.

The group's other public campaigns have focused on putting more controls on pornography and limiting rights for homosexuals.

"It's been an uphill battle from day one," said McCoy, 47. "There are liberal members of the Legislature that oppose what we're doing.

McCoy added, "I'm a Christian. We understand you're swimming upstream when you're trying to do the right thing in this world."

Lambert, 59, has the same assessment and says they wage the fight largely with money from their own pockets and on a volunteer basis.

Donations to the group are few and far between, Lambert said.

The group has endured its share of ridicule.

Lambert said he saved 150 e-mails he received when the group was fighting against several initiatives, like one allowing gay marriage and a proposal to include sexual orientation in hate crimes legislation.

"They were calling us whatever names they could think of," Lambert said.

Both men are West Virginia natives and former Marines.

Lambert was born in Sandy Huff, McDowell County, and graduated from Stoco High School in Coal City in 1966.

He joined the Marine Corps after high school and served two years, coming out as a sergeant. He later joined the Beckley Fire Department and retired with 26 years of service.

In 1981, Lambert said, he was born again. He said it turned his life around.

"Prior to that happening, I would have been one of those all for gambling and nude bodies and alcohol and a good time," said Lambert, who lives just outside of Beckley with his wife of 38 years.

McCoy lives in Elkview with his wife and three children.

He graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in Clendenin in 1978 and joined the Marine Corps under a three-year enlistment.

After that, McCoy said, he moved to Louisiana to find work. Then he moved on to Texas where he worked in the oil fields.

In the 1980s, looking for work, he moved to the Los Angeles area and stayed with his brother. He worked security for Union Bank there for two years and attended classes at a local community college before heading back to West Virginia.

McCoy said his faith drew him to start attending family foundation meetings in Cross Lanes in 1998.

His background as a Marine must have endeared him to Lambert, and McCoy soon found himself president of the group, which was started in 1992.

The group's founder was Sam Cravotta, a former Martinsburg-based architect who campaigned on family issues unsuccessfully against then Rep. Bob Wise in the 1992 and 1994 congressional races.

Cravotta had been involved with the West Virginia chapter of the national American Family Association before starting the new group.

The association financed the West Virginia Family News, a conservative newspaper Cravotta distributed statewide for about a decade beginning in 1990. About 3,500 copies went out ever other month.

"I published all of the news that the newspapers would not publish," Cravotta said.

He formed the West Virginia Family Foundation 1992 as a way to bring together the 20 or so groups around the state that advocated for a return to traditional family values.

The family foundation is still affiliated with the American Family Association.

At one time, Cravotta said, the foundation's board of directors was 22 members strong and scoured government records to expose the voting records of lawmakers on what the group considered anti-family legislation.

Cravotta said he believes his involvement in politics and his leadership of the family foundation ended up harming his career.

Soon after his 1994 race against Wise, he said his work opportunities started to dry up.

He had been working on the FBI center in Clarksburg and with the federal Department of Labor on the Job Corps project in Charleston.

Eventually, he found himself a struggling, self-employed architect.

In 1998, Cravotta said, he left West Virginia for North Carolina to find work. He ended up with a firm in Winston-Salem and worked on plans and construction for the Clay Center in Charleston for about three years.

He said he was eventually pulled off that job and said he believes it was because of his political and activist history.

Nowadays, Cravotta lives in Creedmoor, N.C., about 30 miles north of Raleigh, the state capital.

He's a facilities architect for the state and works primarily on code reviews and state facilities inspections.

Contact writer Justin D. Anderson at justin@dailymail.com or 348-4843