I have always maintained that the general public has mostly (important point) seen nudists in a neutral light, not necessarily positive but not necessarily negative, either. The general idea has been that nudists are harmless eccentrics, much like Civil War reenactors. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people who abhor the idea of someone not wearing clothes in the presence of other people. These are probably the same people who hate Muslims and immigrants (any immigrants, except the president's wife). It's a threat to everything they've been told to believe, just like socialized medicine and anti-pollution laws.
It is even possible that attitudes are even more tolerant, maybe even accepting, of public nudity than they were 40 or 50 years ago. There are, in a few places, where public nudity events like body-painting festivals, the Bay to the Breakers run and so on, although it goes without saying that some still don't approve of stuff like that, no more than they do of body piercing and tattooing and homosexuality. There was even a time when mixed-race marriages were illegal, although I don't know who had the authority to say what race you were.
