[1] It was founded on 27 May 1962 by a group of men including Cees Kooge, John McKay, Brett Rawnsley, and Claude Tanner, the latter of whom would be elected the Society's first President-Chairman.
In 1963, it took the first steps towards law reform by forming a legal subcommittee that collected books and other resources.
By 1967 it sought advice from the English Homosexual Law Reform Society and Albany Trust on the legislative changes occurring there.
[4] About 150 people attended a public meeting in Wellington on 17 April 1967 to form a society to work for homosexual law reform.
His letter to the society secretary, Jack Goodwin, declining patronage was blunt and expressed a common attitude: "These people are mentally sick to as great an extent as, for example, people suffering from smallpox are sick.