Navratilova Says She Will Talk to Magic : AIDS: Still angry about what she says is a double standard, she stresses that she meant no disrespect for Johnson.

Martina Navratilova said she plans to contact Magic Johnson to explain her comments this week that public response would be different if she had contracted HIV instead of Johnson.

“I certainly don’t want him to take it personally because it is not meant as an offensive thing to him,” Navratilova said Thursday after defeating Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the quarterfinals of the Virginia Slims Championships.

“But the double standard is there, and it makes me mad as hell. . . . This Magic thing is another example of women losing power, and we are taking steps backwards.”

Navratilova said she she does not wish to judge anyone. “And I don’t want people to judge me . . . and you know, I am not great. But we can all do better, I think. And the male athletes can certainly do better in their sexual habits.”

Navratilova was quoted Wednesday in the New York Post that a double standard exists depending on who contracts the virus that causes AIDS. She said if a heterosexual woman were found to be HIV-positive after sleeping with hundreds of men, she would be called “a whore and a slut” while “promiscuity, it’s very much accepted (among men.)”

Johnson, who retired from the Lakers Nov. 7 when he announced he had tested HIV-positive, has said he had slept with scores of women and contracted the virus through unprotected sex.

Although Navratilova did not back off her charge of a double standard, she seemed to soften her comments concerning Johnson.

“I met Magic, and he was a wonderful man to me and we had a really nice conversation for about 15 (or) 20 minutes,” she said.

“If I can make a difference in preventing some of that (double standard), then I will,” she said. “But it is not a personal thing against Magic in any way. I don’t wish this on him or anybody else. I’ve had some friends that have died from this disease.”

Navratilova said she was “astonished” by the response to what she had said. “I am sure I could have said that President Bush is a closet cross-dresser and I wouldn’t have got this much.”

She said she has received largely positive feedback.

“A lot of people have been thinking those thoughts but have not been stupid enough or brave enough or vocal enough or famous enough to say them, I suppose,” she said.

“Selfishly I wish that he hadn’t gotten it so I could watch him play basketball,” she said. “He was one of my heroes as a basketball player.”

Navratilova compared AIDS to cancer: “Nobody deserves to get AIDS, nobody deserves to get cancer, but that’s the breaks. You can prevent AIDS a whole lot better than you can prevent cancer.

“But I think the message should be don’t be promiscuous and use a condom. It is not going to cut it, as Dan Quayle was suggesting, that you just don’t have sex until you get married.”