Activists are Trying to Change the Name of the New Space Telescope

Researchers are focusing on the debate over the naming of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope back in October. With the anti-gay laws at NASA during Webb’s tenure, LGBT organizations demanded that the name be altered. When NASA investigated the complaints, they discovered nothing that was directly tied to Webb; therefore, they decided not to change the name.

Queer astronomer became so irritated as a result that she resigned. That appeared to be the end of the debate, but that wasn’t the case. The demonstrations have persisted to this day, and now allegedly, “new material” has been published pointing to the demonstrators’ assertions, implying that Webb was engaged in the incident.

Last month, Nature released the “new knowledge” on which all of this is based. They filed a Freedom of Information Act request for NASA emails when they were looking into the accusations. Almost none of it provides any fresh evidence that Webb was directly involved in the lavender panic,

The sole new item of possible importance was a record of Webb attending a meeting with President Harry Truman in June 1950. They purportedly discussed how agencies should ‘operate together on the gay probe.’ There’s no indication that Webb was ever a part of such an inquiry. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was an explicit anti-gay prejudice in the government and most of the commercial sector. However, it appears that being in a position of power at that time period in 2022 was all it took to be classified as a devil or an oppressor of homosexual and lesbian workers.