Barry Duke - The Freethinker

Barry Duke

4 posts

Barry Duke began to comprehend the despicable nature of Christianity when he was in his pre-teens. He could not fathom why races in South Africa, where he born in 1947, were prevented by draconian laws from interacting. These laws blighted the lives of millions of “non-whites” over many years. It was explained to him that racial separation was mandated by the Bible and that apartheid was necessary to maintain “racial purity”. The architects of apartheid were white Christian fanatics who, in the main, admired the Nazis and were viciously anti-Semitic. As he grew older he began actively opposing the racist policies of the apartheid regime and there was a very real danger that his activities would lead to detention or imprisonment. In 1973 he fled the country, and applied for, and was granted, asylum in the UK as a fully-fledged atheist and a proponent of racial equality – as well as a proud openly gay man. He then became deeply involved with the National Secular Society (NSS) and various LGBT+ organisations, and in 2017 he was handed a Lifetime Achievement award by the NSS for his “spirited opposition to religious intolerance and irrationality” in his roles as a champion of free speech and his work as editor of the Freethinker and The Pink Humanist magazine. In 2017 he was married to his partner of 20 years, Marcus Robinson, in Gibraltar.