Caught an article talking about the James Webb Space telescope and how there are some people who think that the telescope should be renamed so that it doesn’t honor James Webb.
Webb was the second person to lead NASA and did so from 1961 – 1968.
This particular controversy doesn’t arise from the all too common hackneyed phrase of racism.
You do realize that we’re still removing historical figures based on their supposed racism in the 1600’s right???
This controversy is about Webb being the director of NASA during the Lavender scare or Pink Purge.
The Lavender Scare was a period of time when the United States Government sought to purge all homosexuals from their ranks.
The thought was that homosexuals couldn’t be trusted because they were forced to live their lives in the closet. As such, the thinking went, all homosexuals were security risks because all it would take is a commie to find out someone was queer and then blackmail them.
Given the times, it wasn’t actually a bad line of reasoning. In the 1960’s homosexuality was considered a mental illness, and illegal in most states. A queer could lose their job, their home, and be sent to an asylum for their “un-natural” behavior.
Gay men were commonly beaten up, mutilated, or killed, but Lesbians had it worse. There were a lot of men who believed that a lesbian was a lesbian, because she hadn’t had the right cock shoved inside her. Lots of real bastards would volunteer to be that magical dick that made a lesbian a “real” woman.
Picture the almost rape scene from “Kill Bill“. Except that the woman is tied down in an insane asylum and raped at any time, by any orderly who happened to get a hard on.
Oh and let’s not forget routine electro convulsive therapy. A.K.A. Electro shock. Apparently there was a school of thought that said the Gay could be shocked out of the poor soul and make them ‘right as rain’.
These factors would pretty much insure that a Homosexual would do anything to prevent themselves from being discovered.
Look up Alan Turing sometime.
He helped defeat the NAZI Enigma encryption machine, could arguably be called the father of modern computing, and still ended up committing suicide (Although the suicide is still being debated,) because he happened to be homosexual.
I’m not saying that any of this was right, It absolutely wasn’t.
However those were the times.
(As an aside, this kind of persecution is still going on in the Middle East. The “woke” crowd is very willing to ignore it, because it’s ‘Middle Eastern Culture‘. While at the same time the “woke” crowd goes back 200, 100, 60, or 50 years and condemns people for shit that we’ve grown out of, for the most part.)
The Lavender Scare was being perpetrated by none other than the FBI. Who at the time had as its head a crossdressing asshole named J. Edgar Hoover. Uhh duplicitous much?
It’s arguable that the Lavender Scare was rooted in McCarthyism. A dark time in our history famous for the question, “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
The gay purge probably got started there, and just continued on under its own momentum after Senator McCarthy was considered passé.
In the case of James Webb, he happened to be NASA’s director during this time.
So let’s look at this logically. Webb was the director of NASA, he answered to Congress.
Congress has this funny little organization called the FBI who loves digging up dirt on people. J Edgar Hoover really liked having leverage over anyone in power.
Webb had a career, a family, and believed that we should conquer space.
There were hundreds of former NAZI scientists working throughout government labs (brought over during Operation Paper Clip) including one guy by the name of Wernher Van Braun.
Webb knew there is no way in hell that the FBI was ever going to leave his people alone to do their jobs… So he made a choice.
He chose not be obstructionist to the FBI.
Webb chose to keep moving the space program forward.
He in good conscience didn’t defend a group of people that Medical Science, (hey, they believed the science then too,) said were sick in the head, and that the government’s security and intelligence community said were a danger because they could be compromised by the commie bastards in Russia, placing the whole of the Space Program in jeopardy.
It doesn’t matter where he came down morally on boys who do with boys.
He had a Mission to the moon to worry about. I daresay he didn’t worry too much about a few “sick fucks” being purged from his staff.
That does not make Webb a bad man. It makes him a product of his time.
Webb’s scientific achievements merit his name being on the telescope.
I think that we’re looking at something different. I think this name change is nothing more than an attempt to purge another white guy from history.
I think this controversy is nothing more than some “Woke” asshole digging into Webbs history and finding nothing more than a shred of potential guilt that can be hung around his neck, then using this “assigned guilt” to erase Webb’s achievements and legacy.
The authors of the article suggest the telescope be called the Harriet Tubman telescope. While Harriet Tubman was no doubt an American hero, and should be remembered with respect, she was not a scientist. Tubman, like the rest of the people alive in her day was probably very content to leave the mysteries of the firmament in God’s capable hands.
James Webb on the other hand most likely wanted to see God’s hands shaping the heavens.
In my opinion, the latter makes the case for his name being on the space telescope.
We need to stop judging people of the past by the morals of the present. This behavior is irrational and destructive.
We need to look at leaders (whether heroic or despotic) of the past in context of their times. Only then can we see that humanity is progressing (however slowly) toward a better future.
We need to be able to observe past events with an unflinching realism, because only in understanding the errors and successes of the past, can we hope to build a livable future.