Anti-gay message inflicts pain

It must be so comforting up there in the land of certainty. Where everything is black and white.

No room for those murky shades of grey.

I say "up there" because the inhabitants of this particular plane claim the guidance of a higher power. They do not choose to think, speak or behave in a certain way - their God has told them to do so. It is with this certainty they feel entitled to judge the rest of us.

It must be wonderful to have faith, to be so certain that there is life after death, one that is so much better than our earthly existence - an afterlife full of love, forgiveness and happily ever after. Why, then, do so many who profess to believe in something so beautiful insist on using their faith in such an ugly way - to make others who do not measure up to their beliefs feel so abnormal, unloved and unwanted?

Down here in the real world, life is a little more perplexing and far more colourful. After listening to yet another series of missives from the certain ones, I am reminded yet again why I choose to live in the here and now, as if there were no second chances.

Margaret Court was a great tennis player, without a doubt. She won an incredible 62 grand slam titles and brought pleasure to lovers of the game the world over. But as a pastor of Victory Life, the evangelical church she founded, she is inflicting real pain on an already vulnerable section of our community.

Mrs Court waded into the debate about gay marriage with all the certainty and inflammatory language of a zealot. "Politically correct education has masterfully escorted homosexuality out from behind closed doors, into the community openly and now is aggressively demanding marriage rights that are not theirs to take," she told The West Australian.

"To dismantle this sole definition of marriage and try to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices that include sodomy, reveals our ignorance as to the ills that come when society is forced to accept law that violates their very own God-given nature of what is right and what is wrong."

The push for the right for gays to marry has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with love. And, honestly, what is she so afraid of? There was a little quiz doing the rounds on Facebook a while back. Among the multiple choice answers to the question "what will happen if gay people get married", there were the usual fire and brimstone predictions of disasters and Armageddon. The simple answer is, of course, "gay people will get married".

Worse was Mrs Court's frankly medieval assertion that homosexuality is about choice. "The fact that the homosexual cry is, ‘we can't help it as we were born this way', as the cause behind their own personal choice is cause for concern. Every action begins with a thought.

There is a choice made." In preaching the abhorrent notion that homosexuality can be "overcome" with prayer and spiritual guidance as some kind of God-given truth, the venerated sportswoman is not only propagating intolerance, but putting vulnerable people at risk. Young people, in particular, who are still coming to terms with the fact their sexuality is not seen as "the norm", who feel alienated and frightened of telling their own loved ones, let alone the wider world.

Far from being "masterfully escorted" out from behind closed doors, homosexuals have had to endure centuries of mockery, bigotry and much, much worse. They have been beaten, burnt and publicly executed for their "choice". Indeed, in many countries people still "choose" to love someone of the same sex in the face of imprisonment or death.

You would think, wouldn't you, that if it was all about choice that any of the above would have been enough to make these confused individuals abandon their deviant behaviour long ago? If the threat of cancer is enough to make many give up smoking, surely the threat of death would be enough to make one choose to abandon their sexual leanings.

Bemused that the people she describes as an abomination would dare to crash this week's Australian Open and festoon the arena named after her in rainbow colours, Mrs Court professes to lack the very thing she argues homosexuals can use to bring them back into the fold of the righteous: choice.

"My views are biblical views, they're not Margaret Court's views and that's what I believe and that's what I stand for to protect family, to protect marriage between a man and a woman," she argued in her defence.

What is it about zealots that they feel they can pick and choose from an ancient text - written by mere mortals by the way - as befits their purpose? As other correspondents to this paper have pointed out, there are many tracts of the Bible that Mrs Court would never dream of employing as a defence.

The scriptures that support slavery or demand we stone adulterers, or the one that argues no woman should be preaching to men.

Mrs Court is clearly hurt by the backlash from other high-profile tennis players, including Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King, as well as Tennis Australia's statement to the effect it does not share her views. She also seems more than a little miffed that homosexuals and their supporters will be allowed to unfurl their rainbow colours in "her" arena, as if such an open - no pun intended - display of solidarity is more offensive than her diatribe.

That's what you get in a democracy. She made the choice to speak out. Every action begins with a thought, remember? You can't fire a rocket into the heart of real people's lives from a lofty pulpit and expect them to sit idly by while you make them feel less than human.

This pastor may not hate gay people but her comments do nothing to dispel hatred.
Of that I am certain.