Sunday, 24 July 2022

Renaming The James Webb Telescope

James Webb was the the NASA administrator responsible for the Apollo program to land humans on the Moon and appears to be a fine person to have a telescope named after him but the space instrument currently orbiting 1 million miles from Earth could be about to undertake a name change due to Webb's association with the persecution of homosexuals in the 1950s and '60s.
Known as the 'Lavender Scare', Webb joined forces with Joseph McCarthy to purge gays from US government employment and planned and participated in meetings during which he handed over homophobic material on suspected homosexuals in NASA, the reasing being that gay men and lesbians were a national security risks and communist sympathizers, to the Republican politician who had them sacked.
NASA's official response to the controversy is that there is: 'No evidence at this point that warrants changing the name of the telescope' but we are quite rightly in an age where 'heroes' who perpetrated violence against indigenous and enslaved people are having their statues hauled down all over the world so should such a famous piece of Space History bear the name of a homophobe?
There are many famous people who did great things to expand our knowledge of the stars who were not prejudiced bigots who destroyed the lives of  their employee's so it shouldn't be that hard to find a suitable replacement and leave James Webb and his vile view in the 1950's where it belongs.

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