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Sure, if you want to spend your time/effort on that and are able to mobilize and convince enough people to get it changed then you can do that. Im convinced the
by polytely 5y ago
Sure, if you want to spend your time/effort on that and are able to mobilize and convince enough people to get it changed then you can do that. Im convinced there are enough good candidates that ~didn't actively participate in rooting out queer people from NASA~ [not accurate, read thread], which is kind of a low bar. Nobody (I think) is saying that everyone that gets something named after them must have been perfectly 'woke' by todays standards, but when you are naming something and you have the entirety of history to choose from, maybe don't pick James Webb.
- belorn 5y agoInteresting. You say he "rooting out queer people from NASA", but that is not what is found in the article. The question is not about James Webb time in the NASA, but rather during his time in the State Department as an undersecretary. He became an undersecretary in 1949, and started to work in NASA in 1961. The Lavender scare occurred between 1947 and "ended" around 1973. In particular it was the 1953 law signed by Eisenhower which barred homosexuals from working in the federal government. The four astronomers leading the renaming petition say that when Webb worked for the state department in the high-ranking position of undersecretary from 1949 to 1952, he passed a set of memos discussing what was described as “the problem of homosexuals and sex perverts” to a senator who was leading the persecution.
- polytely 5y agoI'm very tired and I misread it, I recently watched For All Mankind (a solid series if you like space stuff), where the looking for gay people in NASA (by the state department I think?) is a big plotpoint, I think that is the origin of the mental image I had while reading it. will edit it, thanks for the correction