Politics

Watch Cate McGregor’s Powerful Response To Margaret Court’s Hateful “Nonsense”

"We’re the low-hanging fruit. You can kick us to death to the applause of the mainstream media... We've got to show dignity when she's not required to."

by Meg Watson  2 June 2017
Margaret Court,

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With each day of the past week, the furore around former tennis legend Margaret Court has reached baffling new highs. Since publicly condemning Qantas for supporting same-sex marriage, Court has doubled down on the homophobia and transphobia. She’s made some bizarre comments about lesbians taking people to parties (um, seems nice?) and compared LGBTIQ activists to Hitler.

Now, in response to growing calls from current tennis champs to boycott Melbourne’s Margaret Court Arena, transgender sports writer Cate McGregor has made a passionate stand against both Court and some of the protests against her.

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“Airbrushing a great player out of Australia’s sporting history by removing her name from that arena would be a mistake,” she said. “I think it’s a strategic mistake for the LGBTI community to pile on to her given that her views — as repugnant as I find them — are clearly in accordance with the teachings of her faith. I think she has absolutely overstepped any support from theology or religion in some of her discursive remarks about the families of transgender kids, which are just nonsense.

“I know a lot of families with young kids who are grappling with gender issues. They are loving families, there is a mother and father present, the kids are loved to bits. Those parents only want two things: they want their child to be happy, and they want them to not kill themselves.

“The risk of self-harm for these kids doesn’t need to be compounded by this sort of gratuitous, unsubstantiated nonsense.”

McGregor additionally called out Court’s “nonsense” views as hypocritical. “I would have thought talking about the LGBTI community in respect of grooming children for sex is pretty poor taste coming from a Christian clergy woman in the current climate,” she said. “If anyone has forfeited their moral authority in this domain it has to be the Australian Christian churches who have presided over systematic child abuse that we have learned about recently through Royal Commissions.”

“But we’re the low-hanging fruit, you can kick us to death to the applause of the mainstream media… and it’s frankly sick-making. This woman has to look at her conscience and live with her remarks.”

Despite this outright condemnation, McGregor was keen to distance herself from other critics calling for punitive action against Court. “The pile-on last week strategically helped her, it gave prominence to her views and it rendered her a victim… I don’t think persecuting a 74-year-old Christian pastor is actually going to take us anywhere. She was a living national treasure for a while and piling on to her is going to erode our moral authority.

“We’ve got to be better than she is. That’s the crazy double standard. We’ve got to show dignity when she’s not required to.”

This comes one day after Tennis champ Martina Navratilova called on Margaret Court Arena to change its name. Though the venue objected to Court’s statements, there’s been no further comment about a potential name change.