Australian tennis legend and Christian pastor Margaret Court says she loves all people but thinks transgender people could be confusing for children.
Days after comparing the Safe Schools program to the propaganda of Adolf Hitler and communists, the 74-year-old Perth pastor told a Melbourne radio station she accepts transgender people.
"That's their choice what they do with their life and I think it's very sad people in that area feel that that is right," she told 3AW on Friday.
"I think the thing is it is confusing to children."
"I accept them but it's a choice in life, I love all people in life, I have nothing against that."
A quote purportedly from Court in 1970 where she praised South Africa's apartheid has resurfaced in recent weeks, but Court says "never in her life" had she supported the regime.
"I played Evonne (Goolagong Cawley) when we were in Africa (in 1971) and I remember there when that was all happening," Court said.
"Evonne and I were playing for the African people, the coloured people at that time - it was on the African courts and then the Africans wouldn't let us in to play and we had to go and play at a military base."
Court said she was being bullied for her views on gay marriage, with ex-player Martina Navratilova calling for Margaret Court Arena to be renamed.
Transgender woman and journalist Cate McGregor says renaming the tennis arena in Ms Court's name "smacks of Stalinist airbrushing".
But she labelled as "repugnant" the tennis legend's views on LGBTI issues, especially the upbringing of transgender children.
"The risk of self-harm amongst kids who are experiencing this kind of conflict does not need to be compounded by this sort of gratuitous, unsubstantiated nonsense," she told ABC on Thursday.
"We face enormous ridicule and discrimination. No one wants to be transgendered, we're born with it.
"I would ask her to think very heavily and examine her conscience about the impact these remarks have on a very small minority of Australians whose lives are difficult enough without this kind of stuff."
Court won 24 grand slam tennis singles titles, 19 doubles titles and 21 mixed doubles titles in her career.
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