Although I support LGBT rights by all means, personally I feel (unfortunately) in some instances people get charged & take things pretty far. This is a general observation not exactly tied to this specific instance. For example, people also criticize Eisenhower & Kennedy for their follies. Yet they have national monuments, naval ships or places in their namesake.

We should maybe drop the practice of naming things after people - and stick to non-persona designations (e.g. Orion, Telstar, Apollo). Safe bet I guess.

Honestly I'm at a point where I'd rather just not name things after people. They're too fraught, the basic idea is questionable at its core, and avoiding it avoids a whole host of potential problems. I'm not saying the criticisms of the Webb telescope name are valid or not, it just doesn't matter to me. Give it a descriptive name, or a fanciful name or one based on some sort of mythology. But not a real person.

I wonder how many people will cancel their family trees because their parents or grandparents could not abide their current lives. Why would you hold your grandparents to a lesser standard than strangers?

> given historical accusations linking Webb to anti-LGBT policies

So call it "ProLGBT Telescope". Or anything stupid and/or funny.

Personally I am totally LGBT-friendly, but I will never forget the situation with Brendan Eich the ex-chairman of Mozilla, whose firing use to had some bad circumstances for Firefox the webbrowser. All "unacceptable" Brendan has done was some donation to anti-LGBT community which IMO is absolutely basic human right as well as being LGBTQ+.

In a world where Anne Frank is being called on her white privilege, no name is probably acceptable.

I wonder if people criticizing these acts of bikeshedding are seen as being anti-LGBT. Modern activism is so off-putting, at least on social media.

I am in favor of calling it the Carl Sagan Stellar Observatory.