“That Webb played a leadership position in the Lavender Scare is undeniable. While discriminatory policies against LGBTQ workers were common in the 1950s and ’60s, under Webb NASA had the authority to set its own rules about who should be fired and for what reasons. An appeals court later ruled that employees “couldn’t be fired solely on grounds of being homosexual.” The Nature article points out that this lawsuit was noted as part of NASA’s 2021 internal probe, meaning agency officials had some proof that anti-LGBTQ policies were enforced during Webb’s tenure. According to Norton’s suit, in which he was defended by former astronomer Frank Kameny, he was told that it was a “custom within the agency” to fire people for “homosexual conduct” and was then dismissed from his position. In 1963, the suit alleges, employee Clifford Norton was seen in a car with another man and then taken into police custody NASA security subsequently brought him to the agency’s headquarters and interrogated him throughout the night. While information about individual cases is limited, one is particularly well-documented in both the Nature report and the movie, thanks to a lawsuit a NASA employee filed over his dismissal. It also dives into documents released in a report in Nature in March, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, regarding how much space agency officials knew about these policies during a 2021 internal probe done in the run-up to the telescope’s launch. Jackson’s documentary delves into problematic yet widespread government policies during the Cold War, when agency workers-including people at NASA-who were suspected of being LGBTQ were deemed a security risk and were investigated, interrogated, pushed to resign, or fired. “The goal is to get the name changed and for NASA to have an honest and open conversation about the naming process,” says Jackson, a video producer working part-time at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and other organizations. The movie explores Webb’s history, NASA’s opaque naming process, and growing pressure from the astronomical community to rename the telescope to alternatives like the Harriet Tubman Space Telescope, the Just Wonderful Space Telescope, or simply its acronym: JWST. This inspired Katrina Jackson and her colleagues at the nonprofit JustSpace Alliance to produce a new 41-minute documentary called Behind the Name, which was released on YouTube earlier this month. NASA officials named the flagship space probe after former administrator James Webb, who helmed the agency and served in the State Department in the 1950s and ’60s and is alleged to have been complicit in enforcing policies that discriminated against gay and lesbian government workers during the “Lavender Scare.” One thing has diminished astronomers’ enthusiasm over the images of stellar nebulae, exoplanets, and distant galaxies NASA released last week: the powerful new space telescope’s name.
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