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If Australians voting "yes" to marriage didn't upset Court enough, Martina Navratilova dragged her on Twitter about the upcoming holidays.
Earlier this week Australians overwhelmingly voted in favor of marriage equality there in a voluntary, nonbinding mail-in vote that Parliament will consider when it takes up the issue. While 7.8 million citizens (nearly 62 percent of those who participated) voted "yes" to marriage equality, tennis champ Margaret Court was so irate over the outcome of the vote that she threatened to break ties with the political party she's been with for 50 years. And adding insult to injury, tennis great Martina Navratilova took the opportunity to troll the virulent homophobe on Twitter.
Court, whose homophobia is so long-standing that it served as a plot point in this fall's Battle of the Sexes (which recalls Billie Jean King's famous match with male chauvinist Bobby Riggs, while also depicting King's love affair with a woman) responded to news that Australian citizens voted "yes" on marriage equality by threatening to break her decades-long relationship with the Liberal Party over it.
"We look at what's there now and they are not listening to the conservatives or what a lot of people would like," Court, who is also a Pentecostal minister, said of politicians considering the vote, according to The West Australian. "They are not allowing you to speak. I don't think I want to be with either party."
Court, whose husband, Barry Court, was once president of the Liberal Party (the country's conservative party), broke ranks with Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a Liberal, alleging that he and the news media did not thoroughly examine the effects of same-sex marriage on education and society, according to The West Australian.
When the mail-in votes were tallied earlier this week, Turnbull said, "The people of Australia have spoken and I intend to make their wish the law of the land by Christmas. This is an overwhelming call for marriage equality."
The news that same-sex couples will be afforded marriage in time to celebrate under the mistletoe is likely another bee in Court's bonnet considering that earlier this year she spoke out against equality by saying, "They want marriage because they want to destroy it. There will be no Mother's Day, there will be no Father's Day, there will be no Easter, there will be no Christmas."
And that's not the worst of it for Court. When the news came down that Australians overwhelmingly voted "yes," Navratilova, who is an out lesbian, trolled Court with the following pointed tweet.
\u201cSo Margaret Court now says there will be no more Christmas or Easter, nor Mother\u2019s and Father\u2019s Day in Australia, all because of Same Sex Marriage. Au contraire Margaret- us gays love parties, especially the boys:), and we just might have 2 Mother\u2019s days and 2 Father\u2019s days:)\u201d— Martina Navratilova (@Martina Navratilova) 1510740307
