Out Tennis Icon and LGBTQ Community Pioneer Billie Jean King Joins the .gay Family of Early Adopters!
When we think about the people who have paved the way for the modern LGBTQ movement, many important names and brave faces come to mind — but one person who is always on that list of pioneers is Tennis legend Billie Jean King — and this week, Billie Jean King brought 3 new .gay sites into the world! The launch of .gay is historic, and we are honored to have such a history-making hero in our midst!
In 1961, Billie Jean gained international recognition for the first time when she and Karen Hantze Susman became the youngest pair to win the Wimbledon women’s doubles title. She won her first major singles championship at Wimbledon in 1966 and followed up with repeat wins in 1967 and 1968. She added her first U.S. Open singles championship in 1967 and the Australian Open singles title the following year.
In 1966, Billie Jean King achieved the goal she set for herself as a young girl when she was ranked #1 in the world in women’s tennis. She held the #1 ranking for five additional years (1967-1968, 1971-1972, and 1974). Between 1961 and 1979, Billie Jean won a record 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 United States titles (including four singles), four French titles (one singles), and two Australian titles (one singles) for a total of 39 Grand Slam titles. In 1972, she won the U.S. Open, French Open, and Wimbledon to claim three Grand Slam titles in one year.
Off the court, Billie Jean campaigned for equal prize money in the men’s and women’s games. In 1970, she joined the Virginia Slims Tour for women, and in 1971, King became the first woman athlete to earn over $100,000 in prize money. Yet when she won the U.S. Open in 1972, she received $15,000 less than the men’s champion, Ilie Năstase. In 1973, at the height of her competitive years, Billie Jean leveraged her position to spearhead the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association and became its first president. She lobbied for equal prize money for men and women at the U.S. Open, and a sponsor was found to level the playing field. The U.S. Open became the first major tournament to offer equal prize money.
The campaign for pay equality gained a worldwide audience of over 90 million when Billie Jean battled tennis player and self-proclaimed chauvinist Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes.” Bobby had claimed the women’s game was inferior to the men’s and Billie accepted his challenge to prove him wrong. King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. No tennis match before or since has been seen by so many. Her tireless efforts to fight injustice and discrimination worldwide continue today.
The following year, Billie Jean went on to co-found the inclusive World TeamTennis co-ed circuit and started the Women’s Sports Foundation, dedicated to creating leaders by providing girls access to sports. While this was all happening, Billie Jean had realized that she was interested in women, and had begun a secret relationship with a woman in the early 1970s. A decade later, in 1981, Billie Jean was publicly outed as a lesbian, and as a result, she lost all of her endorsement deals. Yet through it all, her crusade against inequality in all forms never waned, and she continued to receive recognition for her many contributions to both tennis and the fight for parity.
She was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987, and then later became the first woman to have a major sports venue named in her honor. On August 12, 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama for her advocacy work on behalf of women and the LGBTQ community.
In 2014, she founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative (BJKLI), a non-profit dedicated to addressing the critical issues required to achieve diverse, inclusive leadership in the workforce. We are thrilled that BJKLI has also joined the .gay family of Early Adopters!
Please give a standing O alongside us for one of our LGBTQ heroes, Billie Jean King. Welcome to .gay, BJK! We love you.
