It’s strange to write a critique of the Baron’s characterization such as this but leave out the part that he’s a pedophile child-murderer. Seems to me to be a much more defining aspect of the character than his being gay. And Feid and other Harkonnens are just as psychopathic and murderous and decidedly hetero. But then of course you couldn’t paint Herbert as a homophobe as easily.
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I have no idea whether he was or not but the lazy equivalence of gay=evil shorthand that the book uses has been extremely problematic for decades, which is such a shame because it’s quite ahead of its time in other ways like the deconstruction of the white saviour trope or portraying an “indigenous” people respectfully.
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I don’t know either of Herbert was actually a homophobe, although I would give him the benefit of the doubt seeing as he seems to have been quite the humanist in many other ways.
I have heard the accusation you mentioned before, but I don’t agree with it. Why does an evil character being gay equate to Herbert using gayness as a shorthand for evil? There are plenty of hetero evil characters in the book and others beside the Baron are shown committing (hetero)sexual violence and murder.
In any case, Baron Harkonnen in the new movie is not sexual or sexualized; his evil is one of endless greed and, as an extension of that, gluttony. He’s ominous, gross, ruthless, and has quite a presence. Stellan Skarsgård does a great job in the role. 
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Probably because the “depraved homosexual” has a history in fiction and is used as shorthand to portray just how evil a character is, they are usually defined by it (in a way hetero characters usually aren’t). No, it doesn’t necessarily mean Herbert was homophobic but it is a blindspot when he was quite aware in other respects.
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I can see that. Still, the Baron doesn’t meet the criteria of his homosexuality being the defining characteristic, far from it. As evidenced by the fact that apparently his sexuality isn’t even used as an aspected the character in the new film.
Every depiction of non-heteronormative sexuality in the Dune books was presented as some kind of depravity or perversion. Baron Harkonnen first and foremost, but others as well. For example, when a reincarnated Duncan Idaho (possibly the most traditionally “heroic” figure in the series) finds out that the God-Emperor’s all-female Fish Speaker army tolerates lesbianism he basically loses his shit.
Leaving the Baron’s sexuality out of the new film doesn’t mean that Herbert’s books weren’t problematic when it came to LGBTQ issues, it just means that the filmmakers wisely realized that our society has evolved on that topic since the books were written.
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You are right, I forgot about that part. A lot of the Fish Speaker stuff is ideologically questionable, much more blatantly so than the characterization of the Baron in my opinion
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