Lesbian tennis legend
Martina Navratilova has asked one of her former competitors, who
has spoken out against gay marriage in Australia, whether she is
suppressing her own attraction to the same sex.
Navratilova, 55, wrote
an open letter to the Herald Sun after three-time Wimbledon
champion Margaret Court claimed being gay is a matter of choice and
that many people are gay because they suffered from sexual abuse as
children.
In the letter,
Navratilova asked Court whether she had spurned 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," she wrote, as The Advocate
reports.
"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."
Court, who now works as
a senior minister at Perth's Victory Life Centre, has caused
controversy in her home country for suggesting many gay people are
gay because they were child abuse victims.
The 69-year-old, who
also recently stated that gay marriage campaigners were attempting
"to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices", told
the Herald Sun: "We get them [homosexuals] in [at church] and
you'll find that many, many of them have been abused". When asked
if she believed this had 'turned' them gay, Court said: "Yes. You
look at a lot of them, that's happened.
