Veteran journalist Barry Duke, born in South Africa in 1947, settled in the UK in 1973, where he became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and gay rights organisations.

A militant atheist, he joined the National Secular Society (NSS) and was a co-founder in 1979 of the Gay Humanist Group which changed its name to the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association in 1987.

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 free speech advocate and his work as editor of the Freethinker and The Pink Humanist magazines. He now administers the The Pink Triangle Trust site for the PTT, a UK-based charity,

In 2017 he was married to his partner of 22 years, Marcus Robinson, in Gibraltar. The couple live in Benidorm, Spain.