The Pursuit of Sexual Pleasure.

Sex and War.

Contraception.

Postwar Repression.

Homosexuality.

Sexual Paranoia.

The persecution of homosexuals that began in the late 1940s and continued in the early 1950s was the most blatant form of sexual paranoia that linked so-called perversion to national weakness. Public fear also turned to "sexual psychopaths" who, like homosexuals and Communists, were supposedly lurking everywhere. Women who did not fulfill the prescribed roles of wife and mother were also threatening: untraditional mothers might disrupt the masculine development of their sons; prostitutes and promiscuous women tempted men with their seductiveness. Sexual energy channeled exclusively into marriage was thought crucial to national security. Faithful husbands and fathers wore the label "family man" as a symbol of virility and patriotism.

Sources:

Estelle B. Freeman and John D. Emilio, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row...