It was no coincidence that gay and lesbian activists followed a similar route. In the intervening years the Tasmanian Green movement, led by Brown, had reshaped progressive politics in Tasmania by successfully appealing to international tribunals, and to local and national public opinion through high-profile media and civil disobedience campaigns. The issue arose again in 1988 with the formation of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group in Hobart. Hopes of reform were heightened by a favourable report from the state's Victimless Crimes Committee in 1979, but dashed soon after by an indifferent state Labor government. The first calls for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania occurred in the mid-1970s with the formation of the Tasmanian Homosexual Law Reform Group in Launceston and the coming out of a Launceston-based doctor and environmentalist, Dr Bob Brown. In fact there was much more that was remarkable about a social debate that echoed across the country and around the world.
This fact taken alone suggests that gay law reform in Tasmania was remarkable for no other reason than it arrived so late. In 1997 Tasmania became the last Australian state to decriminalise sex between consenting adult men in private.
