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Martina Navratilova and Nancy Lieberman, two of the nation's...

DALLAS -- Martina Navratilova and Nancy Lieberman, two of the nation's top women athletes, are considering living together, a move that puts Lieberman in the position of having to prove she is heterosexual, a Dallas newspaper reported today.

Navratilova, who Thursday was quoted in a copyright story by the New York Daily News as saying she believed a major sponsor of women's tennis is pressuring her to avoid public discussion of her sexual preferences, told Dallas Morning News sports columnist Skip Bayless Thursday she was unsure whether to move in with Lieberman, the Dallas Diamonds' basketball star.

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'I don't know if I should move in with Nancy because I don't want to implicate her,' said Navratilova, the top money winner of the tennis tour so far this year. 'It's so silly -- guilt by association.

'If two gays live together, nobody thinks anything. If two guys live together, they don't either... We have one gay and one straight -- what's the big deal?'

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'I like men -- I guess I'm bi(sexual). I like both. I just have a better time with women, straight or gay, basically because I don't have to go to bed with them.'

Lieberman told the News that she is simply a 'good friend' who came into Navratilova's life when she needed one most, shortly after Navratilova's breakup with lesbian activist and author Rita Mae Brown.

'I'm not saying it (lesbianism) is wrong but I want to give her a fair chance of changing and seeing the other side,' Lieberman said. 'I'm not here to force guys on her but just to help her get out of that (lesbian) environment.

'If you don't know anything else, you can't give it a chance. She's been taken so much advantage of. People look at her like a dollar bill. I don't need her as a friend for her money or her name and I'm probably the first person able to say that.'

Navratilova said the Daily News story left her little choice but to speak out on the issue. She said the News had asked about her sexual preferences and she responded, asking that the story be delayed until after she had been granted U.S. citizenship.

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She told the News she was hurt most by use of a quote in which she said her parents, who returned to Czechoslovakia after a year's stay in the United States, told her she was 'sick.'

'I hope they don't see that (quote),' Navratilova said. 'Then, my father said he'd rather me be an alcoholic or sleep with a different guy every night than to be what I was. But that has changed. Now they have accepted it. They don't think I'm a bad person.'

Living with Lieberman would make financial sense as well, Navratilova told the News, since she said she had about $250,000 tied up in the Charlottesville, Va., home she shared with Brown.

Lieberman said she realized her friendship with Navratilova could prove a problem.

'I guess I get myself in trouble because I try to do too much for people,' Lieberman said. 'I just want to help her and if people think something else, that's their problem. I could prove my innocence but why should I have to?

'It's such a double standard. It would be OK to move in with Jimmy (Bankston, the man she dates) but...'

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