Martina Asks Whether Margaret Court Is Suppressing Her Own Lesbianism

Lesbian tennis champion Martina Navratilova said she suspects that her former tennis colleague turned antigay spokeswoman may be suppressing her own feelings for women by passionately opposing gay rights.

Court, 69, has made statements against marriage equality and gay rights several times in the recent past, spurring threats of a boycott of the Australian Open.

In an open letter to Court in Australia's Herald Sun newspaper, Navratilova wrote about seeing Court as a role model when she was 17. Now, Navratilova wrote, Court's stance on same-sex marriage has marred her image of the icon. She supposes that Court may have rejected her own feelings for women.

"You say it is a choice to be gay; do you mean to say you had feelings for women as well as men and chose men? That might explain your certainty on the issue," Navratilova wrote.

She also wrote, "People (the straight ones) often ask: Why are people gay? I say, well, why are people straight? There is no straight answer here, so to speak. Human sexuality is multi-faceted, complex and quite fluid; genes play a part as well. How much? Who knows? But that's not really the point anyway."