Since last November, Australian tennis legend Margaret Court has been keeping pressure on officials at Tennis Australia to properly honor the 50th anniversary of her 1970 Grand Slam, as they did for male icon Rod Laver. She’s won more Grand Slams than any man or woman. The anniversary is today.
But there’s a catch and, as is often the case, it’s linked to religious faith.
For many people, Court is on the wrong side of the gay and trans-rights battles. On Sunday, tennis champion — and admitted loudmouth — John McEnroe slammed Court for being a “nightmare,” so the invective is still flying.
I last wrote about this in 2017, so this is a continuation of a long-running clash in major media. The Washington Post did a story recently on how Court is fighting for her legacy.
Fifty years after Margaret Court accomplished one of the greatest feats in women’s tennis, Australian Open officials face the delicate question of just how to honor a woman whose beliefs run counter to the inclusiveness promoted by Australia’s national tennis organization.
Well, the lede right there shouts out the opinion that Court is an enemy of inclusion. That said, I am not sure how I would have worded it. Maybe, “a woman whose traditional religious beliefs run counter to more modern takes on sexual mores promoted by…” etc?
Meanwhile, if the tennis organization was all that inclusive, it would include Court. Despite having a record 24 Grand Slam women’s singles titles:
Court, 77, has drawn criticism for controversial views on same-sex marriage and transgender issues, with Martina Navratilova recently calling her comments on transgender women and children “pathetic” and saying she was “hiding behind her Bible.”
The controversy left Court saying that she hoped to keep tennis separate.
“I wish the press would stick to my tennis,” she told ABC Radio Perth. “I’ve had so many people touch me on the shoulder and say, ‘Thank you for being my voice.’ I haven’t had anyone say, ‘I hate you.’ I teach what the Bible says and get persecuted for it.”
Since when did Navratilova become a Bible scholar?
Why are Court’s views labeled as controversial when some of them line up with major Christian doctrines? And what are those views? Stick with me for the next three paragraphs:
In her most recent controversial comments, Court, a Pentecostal minister at Perth’s Victory Life Centre, called trans women “problematic,” especially in sports competition, and said during a recent sermon that being gay is “a choice."
“Because we are living in a season … even that LGBT and the schools — it’s of the devil, it’s not of God … ” she said (via the Sydney Morning Herald). “And when children are making the decision at 7 or 8 years of age to change their sex … no, just read the first two chapters of Genesis; that’s all I say. Male and female.
“It’s so wrong at that age because a lot of things are planted in this thought realm at that age. And they start to question, ‘What am I?’ And if you are a Christian … you believe the word of God. This is our TV Guide to life. … And you know with that LGBT, they’ll wish they never put the T on the end of it because, particularly in women’s sports, they’re going to have so many problems. And you have got young people taking hormones and having changes, by the time they are 17 they are thinking, ‘Now I’m a boy and really I was a girl.’ Because, you know what? God’s made us that way.”
The issue of trans females getting sports medals that otherwise would have gone to biological girls is causing a huge uproar around the world. This wired.com piece spells out a bit of the problem although it’s very biased toward the transgender POV. NBC has this on a proposed bill to bar transgender women from women’s sports. The Wall Street Journal debates the question here.
Thus, Court is hardly an outlier when it comes to expressing her concerns. She happens to put a Christian gloss on it but even the non-religious (particularly those with daughters in girls sports) are caught up in this debate. See the video by Sky News host Rita Panahi (who identifies herself as an atheist and pro-same-sex marriage) atop this post for an example of the latter.
Panahi made the ascerbic point that the national tennis association was “proud of gender-neutral toilets at Melbourne Park” (which is the home of the Margaret Court Arena). “We never punish sports stars who spout divisive leftist opinions,” the broadcaster said.
No kidding. Why do reporters consistently act like it is OK for some sports figures (Colin Kaepernick, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Arthur Ashe) to protest everything from racism and the war in Iraq to U.S. handling of Haitian refugees, yet Margaret Court can’t say her piece about transgender sports?
Some causes are less fashionable than others. For instance, look at this New Yorker piece about gay women tennis players.
You don’t read anything about Navratilova’s vicious quotes about Court in that. In another piece about Court, the New Yorker doesn’t quote one person speaking in her defense. I guess when the cause is righteous enough, we don’t need objectivity or balanced journalism, do we?
Here is the video that Tennis Australia is using to honor Court, so we will see how this all shakes out this week. And I do wish to spotlight TennisWorldUSA’s interview with Chris Evert, which sidestepped the controversial stuff and said Court, were she 50 years younger and playing today, would still be a champion.
Meanwhile, in other religion news, be sure to capture the big Twitter fight over Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber’s tweet last Saturday where she shows herself literally giving the finger to the Masterpiece Cake Shop, which is next door to where she has her weekly 12-step meeting. I’d estimate that close to 90 percent of the 1,000+ replies to that tweet trashed her for not acting like a cleric nor a Christian.
Also, take a look this Harper’s long read on evangelicals in Brazil. Lots of journalists have tromped down to Brazil in recent years to get a read on the Pentecostal explosion. This reporter for this story flew down at least twice to research the story and the writing is unusually good.