(PresidentialWire.com)- Earlier this year, LGBTQ activists and “Woke” scientists got over 1,200 signatures on a petition demanding that NASA rename the James Webb Space Telescope, because they believe its namesake was homophobic.
Fortunately, NASA told them to take a walk in space.
Last week NASA rejected their demands to rename the telescope that bears the name of the former NASA administrator appointed by JFK who oversaw the Apollo missions. Apparently, according to the petitioners, Webb “persecuted” gays during his tenure at NASA.
Instead, they demanded the James Webb Space Telescope be renamed after a former NASA employee who was fired from the agency in 1963 when Webb was in charge. This man, Clifford Norton, who was gay, was questioned by police and NASA’s head of security for “gay activity.”
Of course at that time, homosexual activity was still illegal in the United States, and that was certainly not the fault of James Webb.
In fact, nobody is even certain James Webb had anything whatsoever to do with this Clifford Norton getting fired. So how these activists can conclude that Webb “persecuted” gays is a mystery.
After investigating the issue, NASA ultimately concluded that there wasn’t any evidence backing up the activists’ claim. NASA’s senior science communications officer Karen Fox told NPR that after exhaustive research, NASA has “not uncovered evidence warranting a name change.”
“Black and queer” cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, was not happy about NASA’s decision, telling NPR that now an object bearing the name of a homophobic bigot will be circling the Earth for decades to come. She also accused NASA of a lack of transparency over its investigation.
Chanda conceded that she has not seen any evidence that James Webb had anything to do with Clifford Norton being fired, but that doesn’t matter to her. She believes that if he didn’t, then he was a bad administrator for not knowing that NASA’s head of security had questioned Norton.
Hailed as the successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2020. It has the capacity to view light from the earliest galaxies in the universe. It can analyze the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars, allowing NASA to search for gases in the air that may indicate the presence of life.
