Sam Stosur’s baby news must have Margaret Court melting
When Australia’s most beloved tennis player Sam Stosur announced this week that she and her female partner had become parents, it was greeted with exactly the response it deserved, writes Claire Harvey.
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Coming out is a deeply personal matter and a choice that must be left to the individual.
It’s also, for some people, a potentially powerful public service.
This week Samantha Stosur, Australia’s most beloved tennis player, revealed she and her partner, who happens to be a woman, are celebrating the birth of a beautiful baby girl.
Stosur has been famously discreet about her private life until now, and it must have been a big decision to reveal so much all at once.
And lo – she was not struck down by a bolt of lightning. The nation’s family structure has not crumbled as a result of her announcement. Impressionable young tennis fans have not suddenly been drawn into contemplation of new sexual identities.
Leading homophobe Margaret Court no doubt began melting into her Volleys, and is presumably rolling a sheet of A4 into her Olivetti right now to fire off an angry letter to the editor about it.
But Margaret speaks only for herself, and the rest of us greeted the news with exactly the response it deserved: “Awwww, that’s nice.”
Australia, we appear to have grown up.
“Tennis is full of lesbians!” steamed Margaret a couple of years ago. “Even when I was playing there was only a couple there but those couple that lead … took young ones into parties and things. And because they liked to be around heroes and what you get at the top is often what you will get right through that sport.”
Mmmm-hmmm. Sounds like someone is still grumpy about not being invited to drinks in 1964.
The last time a female Australian tennis player had a beautiful baby — Casey Dellacqua with her partner Amanda Judd — Margaret Court declared in a letter to the editor: ‘Personally I have nothing against Casey Dellacqua or her “partner” (her quote marks). I simply want to champion the rights of the family over the rights of the individual to engineer social norms and produce children into their relationships.’
Presumably the ‘norm’ Margaret thinks is being engineered by LGBTQI people is the one about unconditional love for children; a value for a true Christian if ever there was one.
And the truth which Margaret ignores, along with her shrinking support base of fellow curtain-twitchers, is that the “rights of the family” are exactly what mobilised the vast majority of Australians to endorse marriage equality in a voluntary vote in 2017.
Sam Stosur and Casey Dellacqua are more representative of the Australian family in 2020 than Margaret Court has ever been.
You'd struggle to find a family that didn’t include an LGBTQI person; usually the most popular and beloved one.
That’s the biggest social change in our lifetimes: people of every sexual identity have become accepted, and have found the courage and support to be open about their identity within families that have, in so many cases, showered them with love.
I’m not pretending it’s easy in every family, and we all know discrimination and prejudice persist.
But every time someone famous like Sam comes out, and the response is overwhelmingly warm and supportive, it becomes easier for every family to become safer and more truly loving.
Acceptance is contagious. That’s the norm we should all be engineering.