Benedict Cumberbatch: America needs a female president, then a gay one
Benedict Cumberbatch has claimed that the US should have a gay president after it elects a female one.
The British actor was speaking to The Daily Beast ahead of the launch of his film about the life of gay codebreaker Alan Turing, The Imitation Game.
He said: “You need to have a female president next, and then after that, a gay president. That’s the full journey from Obama’s legacy onwards.
“There’s a great Morrissey lyric that goes, ‘In America, the land of the free, they said / And of opportunity, in a just and truthful way / But where the president is never black, female or gay, and until that day / You’ve got nothing to say to me, to help me believe’.
“It’s quite an old song from before Obama took office, but you’ve done black, then you need to do female, then the next, gay.”
Cumberbatch also claimed that the Lib Dem leader of the House of Lords, Baron McNally, was “probably gay” because he shot down a petition to pardon Alan Turing in 2012.
He said: “It’s disgusting. It gets me very, very angry. Who’s Lord McNally? Well, he’s probably gay. They’re always the biggest homophobes.”
Cumberbatch’s film was itself criticised last year by Turing’s biographer, who accused filmmakers of downplaying the fact that the codebreaker was gay.
Alan Turing was eventually granted a posthumous pardon by the Queen in December last year.
