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.
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Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“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)