Tennis legend Martina Navratilova has responded to Margaret Court’s latest round of attacks on the LGBTIQA+ community with her own open letter.

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Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, the letter repeats calls for Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne to be renewed in light of Court’s most recent spate of comments about marriage equality, LGBTIQA+ people, transgender people and their families.

Navratilova, who defected to America from communist Czechoslovakia in the mid 1970’s and came out in a newspaper interview in 1981, said when a building is named after someone you have to look at their whole life, not just their sporting career.

Navratilova said you have to consider a person’s whole body of work; “it is not just for what this person did on the field, on the court, in politics, arts or science, for instance, but also for who they are as human beings.”

Highlighting the recent revelations showing the Court had been a vocal supporter of apartheid in the 1970s, alongside her recent descriptions of transgender children being influenced by the devil, and accusations that older lesbian tennis players had lead younger people astray, Navratilova said its clear who Margaret Court is.

“It is now clear exactly who Court is: an amazing tennis player, and a racist and a homophobe.” Navratilova said.

Margaret Court’s recent comments linking LGBT people to Nazi’s, communism and the devil were described as being “sick and dangerous”.

“This is not OK. Too many will die by suicide because of this kind of intolerance, this kind of bashing and yes, this kind of bullying. This is not OK.”

“Kids will suffer more because of this continuous bashing and stigmatising of our LGBT community.” Navratilova said.

OIP Staff