News Corp columnist Justin Smith has labeled Perth based religious leader Margaret Court a “second class human being” drawing an fiery response from Sky News hosts Steve Price and Liz Storer.
Smith was appearing as a guest on The Kenny Report where Price was appearing as a fill-in host and Storer had joined the panel conversation.
Price reported that tennis star Evonne Goolagong Cawley had recently spoken positively about how Court had shown her great hospitality earlier in her career.
Court, who was a tennis champion before she launched her evangelical church, holds the record for the greatest number of Grand Slam wins and is a revered icon in tennis. In her role as a church leader she has been a vocal critic of same-sex relationships, rainbow families and transgender people.
It has lead to ongoing calls for Tennis Australia to remove her name from Melbourne’s Margaret Court Arena. Tennis Australia have announced that Court will attend the premier tournament for the first time in four years.
Price said Goolagong Crawley’s positive comments about Court were a “return to common sense” but Smith argued it was possible to appreciate her sporting achievements and condemn her actions at a religious figure.
“She is a first class tennis player, beyond first class – she is magnificent.” Smith said. “I also happen to believe she’s a second class human being and has done some dreadful damage and said some awful things about transgender people and same-sex marriage, and I think she is a delusional Jesus-freak.”
The comments riled up Liz Storer who spoke over Smith saying his comments were “shameful” and “disgusting”. Storer accused Smith of “religious discrimination” saying Court’s comments had only event been quotes from scriptures.
Revered Court has previously voiced her opposition to allowing same sex couples to marry, criticised gay couples who have children, suggested that people are gay because they’ve been sexually abused, suggested that professional tennis has been overtaken by lesbians, described transgender children as being of the devil, and shared her thoughts that thinking about being same sex attracted will lead to you being same sex attracted.
In the past Reverend Court has also spoken about how gay people are embraced by her church and said many of them have gone on to have heterosexual marriages and children.
Host Steve Price said Smith’s comments were “out of line” and Margaret Court was entitled to share her views describing it as a matter of freedom of speech.
Storer said Court had never pushed her beliefs on other people.
“Those are her beliefs and they are very clearly laid out in The Bible.” the Sky News host said. “She has never pushed it on to other people, she’s simply emphatically stood by woman of conviction.”
Price went on to ask Smith if he’d dare to repeat his views to Margaret Court face to face, something that the columnist said he’d have no problem doing.
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