Elders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses are not allowed to have beards, because it makes them look like dirty rotten gay communist hippies.

In the 1950s, in the the USA, beards were widely unpopular among the general public and most men who wore one were immediately perceived as beatniks (and later, hippies). In that American, Cold War climate, a young man who didn’t sport a military-esque brush cut and bare chin was out-of-hand labeled a communist or homosexual.

I just thought it made me look cuddly!