As of the last time I checked, @NSBPInc President-Elect Hakeem Oluseyi’s blog entry that seeks to exonerate homophobic federal admin James Webb still contains what I consider to be potentially libelous comments about me, one of the only openly queer faculty in the organization.

"The...article references a professional astrophysicist as his original source for learning about the allegations against Webb. This scientist propagated unsubstantiated false information as if it were true without performing proper scientific rigor to investigate its veracity."
This comment specifically cites an article on https://t.co/5MxzND1CGW by Matthew Francis where Francis says that he first learned about the allegations against Webb because of me. Francis does not identify me as an authority nor does he quote me as an authoritative source.
I believe that what Francis was (quite reasonably) referring to is seeing me tweet The Stranger article by Dan Savage.

Oluseyi takes it a step further by insinuating that I knowingly made false statements and claiming that I did not investigate.

Oluseyi has no evidence.
Again, I want to highlight that the president elect of the National Society of Black Physicists wrote an essay, claiming to support queer people, where he makes a point of impugning the integrity of the only openly queer faculty member in the org, who is also early career.
Oluseyi did not approach me with his concerns. He did not reach out to me with a correction to my tweets about this. (that I should have said State Dept instead of NASA might have been fair!)

Instead he chose a public attack on me and frankly, on Matt Francis as a journalist.
Oluseyi’s essay is in my opinion homophobic, and I do not believe he should be leading an organization like @nsbpinc that includes a growing queer student and other early career researcher population. That’s just my opinion though. The board/membership will do what it wants.
Next I want to turn to the larger astro comm, including NASA folks who circulated this piece:
1. As @RocketToLulu outlines with support from @ColdWarScience and @adrianlucy, the history side of piece is poorly researched. Were you competent to evaluate it?
https://t.co/BapaMCtvLw
2. It’s clear some of you circulated it without reading the whole thing carefully because if you had, you would have noticed the pointed personal comments. Surely you know those would be inappropriate in a scientific paper, right? Why didn’t he include a name? This is a red flag.
3. The desire to exonerate a dead white guy who was in the thick of federal governance during the McCarthy Era should give all of you pause. Like, seriously. If he had been a radical freedom fighter, he wouldn’t have been in the Truman administration. Learn some history.
4. The silence over the last two days as the homophobia and damaging personal attacks in the piece were made clear is grotesque, homophobia, and misogynoir. A lot of you have left us to address the homophobia alone and me to address the misogynoir by myself.

Shame on you. SHAME.
I feel compelled to say especially to the hetcis astronomers that this is particularly shameful because I am now on day 4 of using up time addressing this, as is Lucianne. And Adrian is a student who is in their final year!

Science time has been stolen from queer people by you.

More from Politics

My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:
This is partly what makes it impossible to have a constructive conversation nowadays. The stubborn refusal to accept that opposition to Trumpism and GOP nationalism is about more than simply holding different beliefs about things in and of itself. 👇


It's fine for people to hold different beliefs. But that doesn't mean all beliefs deserve equal treatment or tolerance and it doesn't mean intolerance of some beliefs makes a person intolerant of every belief which they don't share.

So if I said I don't think Trumpism deserves to be tolerated because it's just a fresh 21st century coat of cheap paint on a failed, dangerous 20th century ideology (fascism) that doesn't mean I'm intolerant of all beliefs with which I disagree. You'd think this would be obvious.

Another important facet. People who support fascist movements tend to give what they think are valid reasons for supporting them. That doesn't mean anyone is obliged to tolerate fascism or accept their proffered excuse.


Say you joined a neighborhood group that sets up community gardens and does roadside beautification projects. All good, right? Say one day you're having a meeting and you notice the President and exec board of this group are saying some bizarre things about certain neighbors.

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