Australian professional tennis player
Samantha Stosur has backed Martina Navratilova's calls for Margaret
Court Arena to be renamed over Court's opposition to LGBT rights.
Seventy-four-year-old tennis great
Court, now a Christian pastor, announced a boycott of Qantas over its
support for marriage equality in Australia.
Court defended her views during an
interview this week with a Christian radio station and went on to say
that “tennis is full of lesbians” and transgender people are
influenced by the devil. Tennis legend Navratilova, who is openly
gay, responded by calling on tennis officials to rename the arena
that bears her name at Melbourne Park, home to the Australian Open.
(Related: Margaret
Court says transgender people influenced by the Devil, Tennis full of
lesbians.)
“I think she's digging a very big
hole for herself at the moment. And for whatever reason, she wants
to keep talking about it,” Stosur told reporters from the French
Open.
“I actually really like the column
that Martina Navratilova wrote the other day. It's about the tennis,
but it's also about who you are. And I think if there's not a nice
light in that, then why should there be that name up in lights,”
she
added.