About Barry Duke

CHANNEL 4’s airing of the docudrama Britain’s Greatest Codebreaker on 21 November marked an early start to the Alan Turing Year, 2012, during which a series of events are planned to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth on 23 June 1912.

The film tells Alan Turing’s story using three interwoven strands. One is the authoritative-sounding voice of an off-screen narrator (spoken by Paul McGann). The second is a series of talking heads – people with a particular insight into some part of Turing’s life or work. The third is a sequence of dramatised interviews between Turing (played by Ed Stoppard) and his psychotherapist Franz Greenbaum (played by Henry Goodman).

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Pink Humanist editor Barry Duke goes for the jugular

In a bizarre, round-about way I learned last month that that the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual” never existed until they were invented by a 19th-century writer called Karl-Maria Kertbeny.

I came by this information after receiving a long (3,007-word) email from Christian zealot David Skinner, who is trying – with scant success – to get Britons to boycott the supermarket giant Tesco after it announced that it would be sponsoring World Pride 2012 in London.

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Reacting to Nigeria’s rampant homophobia, Nigerian LGBTIs gathered in London on Novermber 15 to demand the repeal of all anti same-sex laws in that country, and to protest against the anti same-sex marriage Bill.

The protesters, who gathered outside Nigeria House, were joined by international supporters including notable UK Human rights activist, Peter Tatchell.

The protesters carried placards with a variety of slogans: “Kiss Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia Goodbye!” “Proudly Gay, Proudly Nigerian!” “Some Nigerians are Gay, Get over it!” “Sodomy law is a colonial relic, repeal it now!” “Kiss Anti Same Sex marriage bill and Sodomy laws Goodbye!” and “Stop turning us into refugees, Repeal Sodomy laws Now!”.

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Image via promotional video

Shot in little more than a fortnight and covering events taking place just over two days, Andrew Haigh’s recently-released Weekend has been wowing critics and audiences around the world – or at least in those parts of the world which allow gay love to be portrayed on the screen.

Acclaim for the film has been remarkable. For example, Brian Moylan, reviewing Weekend for the US site Gawker, wrote: “We’re so trained to watch romantic movies that are of the dreaded rom-com variety – with its silly conventions, outlandish plots, and preternaturally good-looking people – that seeing something that is familiar and real is not only shocking and disorienting, but really rewarding. Read More