When we look up at the stars with our children and try to explain the galaxy’s vastness, it’s so easy to feel so small. Especially as science continues to progress and we learn more and more about the universes we are surrounded in. However, one thing has always remained, when our children look up at the night sky, we tell them they can be anything, do anything, and be anyone. Until they can’t. Until an institution meant to foster learning and further our understanding of space tells you otherwise.
On July 12, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) made its global debut with beautiful, never before seen pictures of space with its 10 billion dollar camera peeking into the cosmos with insane focus. It’s a feat that cannot be overlooked. However, the person the telescope was named after was intensely homophobic and unapologetic about it.
James Webb was NASA’s Administrator, running the then small space program from 1961 to 1968, and played a significant role in the Apollo missions. Before he got to NASA, he served under the Truman administration and was a key player in the Lavender Scare, a period from the late 40s to as late as 1972. Webb worked with Truman and the Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments to purge queer federal employees from their positions. In 1950 alone, 91 people were fired from the U.S. State Department either because they were outed as queer or suspected of being queer. This endangered the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of now unemployed queer people and their families. Worst of all, NASA defended Webb and the decision to name the telescope after him, citing, “NASA found no evidence at this point that warrants changing the name of the telescope.”
To say that NASA has absolutely no evidence of this discrimination or the hurt Webb helped inflict is, at its minimum, hurtful. As young queer people, when you are told you can be anything, you believe it. You grow, and you learn, and you study, and if you’re one of the best and the brightest, you get to work for a major government agency with the budget and the ability to literally move science forward. But there’s a catch: you have to accept that the groundbreaking scientific objects you work with are named after someone who never would’ve let you walk into the building, let alone leave it with your reputation intact. Phil Plait, an American astronomer, wrote in his Bad Astronomy Newsletter, “It’s difficult to want to use an instrument when you know you’ll have to write about it using the name of someone who worked to negate your very existence.”
Queerphobia, such as the Lavender Scare, is so deeply ingrained into American society that it’s hard to imagine these 50 patriotic states without it. We build monuments in the names of homophobes, regal the newest generations of their names and accomplishments, and shrug off their hate as a “sign of the times.” It is, in fact, such a part of our daily lives that we hail places like Greenwich Village in New York and the Castro District in San Francisco as the “best and only places to be openly gay." Not only is this incorrect, but it allows us to continue to completely ignore the queer kids in Texas or Missouri or Utah or scattered among the Appalachian Mountains and into the Deep South. We watch Oscar-baiting movies written, directed, and produced by straight people who want to tell queer stories “authentically” but often leave out what they deem to be the unsavory parts of queer history, effectively cherry-picking our lives to create Hollywood’s clean, just tragic enough to be beautiful, sellable version of queerness. It was never just about a name. It never touches just one thing.
How we navigate the world has so much to do with the people who came before us and the history they left for us. So, how long will we let homophobes be idolized and their names engraved before something changes? How long are we going to send the message that it’s okay to hate certain marginalized groups as long as you do X, Y, and Z? How much longer will it be true and right to look up into the sky with our children and tell them they can be anything?
NASA’s response to the fallout over the name of this telescope is infuriating, and so telling of the queerphobia still clings to our government. The absolute least NASA could do is change the name of the telescope. Perhaps they could even call it the Frank Kameny telescope so it could be named after a queer astronomer who served in WWII, was fired under Lavender Scare politics, and went on to become a key leader in the fight towards equality. Or they’ll let their true colors show and potentially lose some of the best minds of our generation because they wanted this to be the hill they die on and defend one dead homophobe from the 60s. Their call, though.
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