Navratilova Slams Back at Racist, Homophobic, Transphobic Tennis Icon

Margaret Court was one of Australia's great tennis players in the 1960s and '70s, but now she's a hateful Christian pastor, spewing bile against LGBT people. Out tennis star Martina Navratilova is responding to Court's latest hateful tirade and wants a stadium named in Court's honor to drop her name.

"It is now clear exactly who Court is: an amazing tennis player, and a racist and a homophobe," Navratilova wrote to the operators of Melbourne's Margaret Court Arena, which hosts matches for the Australian Open. The letter appeared in The Sydney Morning-Herald. "Her vitriol is not just an opinion. She is actively trying to keep LGBT people from getting equal rights (note to Court: we are human beings, too). She is demonising trans kids and trans adults everywhere.

"And now, linking LGBT to Nazis, communists, the devil? This is not OK. This is in fact sick and it is dangerous. Kids will suffer more because of this continuous bashing and stigmatising of our LGBT community."

Navratilova was referencing recent comments by Court, where she disparaged sane-sex marriage (which remains illegal in Australia) and said the following about transgender children: "That's all the devil. But that's what Hitler did and that's what communism did -- got the minds of the children. And there's a whole plot in our nation and in the nations of the world to get the minds of the children."

Court also supported apartheid in the 1970s, according to Navratilova. The Australian tennis player disparaged Navratilova in the 1990s, saying she was a bad role model because she's gay.

Disregarding her ugly past, Court's name was plastered on the tennis arena in 2003. Whether Court's latest comments will convince operators to scrub her name from the stadium remains unclear.