Background
The years after the end of World War II were some of the most socially repressive in US history. Postwar anti-communist feelings became quickly associated with personal secrets of people who worked for the US government. Congress began to require the registration of members of "subversive groups." In 1950, the State Department identified homosexuals as security risks, and what followed was a succession of more repressive acts that included multiple firings of personnel working for federal, state and local governments who were suspected of being homosexual, politically motivated police raids on gay bars all over the US and Canada, and the enacting of laws prohibiting cross-dressing for men and women.
Read more about this topic: Daughters Of Bilitis
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)