There has been an ongoing feud between Margaret Court, one of the all-time great tennis players, and a few of the other greats of the game, notably, Billy Jean King, John McEnroe, and Martina Navratilova. Margaret Court has an arena named after her in the National Tennis Centre at Melbourne Park, where the Australian Open Tennis Tournament is played every year. This makes sense since she is from Australia and has accumulated more Grand Slam Singles titles (24) than any other player in history.

McEnroe and Navratilova have protested the arena being named after Court, demanding that it be changed. Billy Jean King has also publicly suggested the same, though she has recently said that she will stop calling for it. What is the problem with Margaret Court? She opposes homosexuality and the transgender lifestyle, as well as same-sex marriage.

This is not an article to praise Margaret Court, though I appreciate her stand against homosexuality. Since her retirement from tennis, she has become a Pentecostal preacher and claims to have healing power and the ability to speak in tongues, neither of which she can do since the scriptures teach explicitly that both have ceased. What I am interested in is how those who condemn her have bought into the devil’s lie about homosexuality and those who oppose it.

The parties mentioned above all view Margaret Court as a racist. In an open letter that Navratilova wrote to Margaret Court Arena, she wrote, “It is now clear exactly who Court is: an amazing tennis player, and a racist and a homophobe…We should not be celebrating this kind of behavior, this kind of philosophy. The platform people like Margaret Court use needs to be made smaller, not bigger.”

For the record, Margaret Court probably is a racist, given past statements she has made concerning South Africa and apartheid. But, and here is where the devil is busy at work, she is not a racist because she opposes homosexuality.

A person simply cannot believe in the Bible and practice, promote, or encourage homosexuality. The scriptures unequivocally call it sin (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:9-10). Is every person who accepts the Bible as the Word of God a racist? Many would say yes because they have believed the devil’s lie.

What is the lie that the devil has been successful in getting people to believe? It is that people are born homosexual. Promoters of that lifestyle have hoped for years that some kind of gene will be discovered that proves that those who practice homosexuality have no choice in the matter. Unfortunately for them, no such evidence exists. Why is this so important to them? It is important because if they can prove that one is born a homosexual, they can present it as something equivalent to ethnicity, and speaking out against it then becomes a form bigotry, which most people oppose.

Regrettably, even though it has never been proven that one is born with a genetic desire for the same sex, the gay rights community has been successful in convincing the masses that it is so. With the power of Hollywood, and the liberal-minded media, homosexuality is now viewed the same way as being born black or white. It is now, in the minds of millions around the world, a civil rights issue. This view has hastened the acceptance of homosexuality exponentially. Even those who do not completely agree with the lifestyle, dare not speak out against it because they do not want to be viewed as a racist.

Due to this view, the gay-rights issue has become a human rights issue, and anyone who opposes homosexuality is viewed as a cruel, unloving person who is unduly prejudiced against a community of innocent people just because of who they love. Today, either you support the LGBTQ community, or you are a homophobe who is intolerant to basic human rights. Supporters of homosexuality like to say that they are committed to “equality, diversity, and inclusion,” leaving the impression that anyone who opposes the homosexual lifestyle is against those things, especially as it relates to people.

All of this plays right into the hands of the devil. He uses sin to decimate the souls of people, and because he has successfully convinced a substantial portion of this world to believe that homosexuality is a natural and normal behavior, thousands, maybe even millions, of people will be lost in the end. I do not agree with all of Margaret Court’s statements about homosexuals. She is a Pentecostal preacher; thus, her theology is flawed. Her stance against the sin of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, however, is right because it is in agreement with the Bible.

Let me be clear about the position of Bible-believing Christians. We are not intolerant of people; we are intolerant of sin. We love homosexuals, but we hate homosexuality, which is a sinful choice just like every other form of fornication and type of sin. At the heart of our opposition, is our respect for God and His Word, as well as our love for others who we do not want to spend eternity in a devil’s hell. It appears to me that gay-rights activists are not as tolerant as they like to think. Since we do not take their position on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, we cannot be accepted as loving people who care about others. I guess “equality, diversity and inclusion” only goes so far.