It was the last Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise homosexuality after a United Nations Human Rights Committee ruling, the passage of federal sexual privacy legislation and a High Court challenge to the state's anti-homosexuality laws.

[4] Over the subsequent hundred years, Tasmania had the highest rate of imprisonment for private consenting male sex anywhere in the world.

[9] In the late 1980s, Premier Robin Gray stated that homosexuals were unwelcome in Tasmania and police recorded the vehicle registration plates of people attending gay community meetings.

[6] A gay rights stall set up in Salamanca Market in 1988 was repeatedly shut down by the Hobart City Council with over 120 people arrested by police.

[4] During the 1980s and early 1990s, six attempts at decriminalisation were emphatically rejected by the Tasmanian Legislative Council,[3] with politician Robert Archer calling for homosexuals to be "tracked down and wiped out" by police.

[6] Many gay and lesbian Tasmanians responded to the hostile sentiment by either relocating to the mainland Australian cities of Sydney or Melbourne, living in the closet or committing suicide.

[4] Recalling the personal impact of the 1990s decriminalisation debate, comedian Hannah Gadsby noted it led them to "rot quietly in self-hatred" and unable to develop an aptitude for relationships.

[11][12] The Tasmanian Parliament's repeated refusal to pass laws decriminalising private same-sex sexual acts resulted in local resident Nicholas Toonen bringing a human rights complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Committee,[13] which ruled in Toonen's favour on 31 March 1994.

The Committee noted that "the criminalisation of homosexual practices cannot be considered a reasonable means or proportionate measure to achieve the aim of preventing the spread of AIDS/HIV," further noting that "The Australian Government observes that statutes criminalising homosexual activity tend to impede public health programmes by driving underground many of the people at the risk of infection.

"[14] Gay activists and Amnesty International also mounted a campaign in favour of reform including demonstrations in the state and elsewhere, holding meetings between LGBTI Tasmanians and community groups across the state and gay men self-reporting their then-illegal consensual activities to police to illustrate that the laws were unenforceable, given that police would not prosecute them on the basis that it was not in the public interest.

[15] The continued criminalisation led to a petition signed by 12,000 people and a "Buy Right" boycott campaign targeting Tasmanian tourism and produce until the laws were repealed.

[16] The Catholic Right members of the Australian Labor Party initially opposed the federal legislation but ultimately agreed to support its passage, while the issue split the opposition Coalition, with many members exercising their conscience vote against it and replacing their relatively progressive leader Alexander Downer with the more conservative John Howard.

[18] On 14 November 1995, Nick Toonen and his then-partner Rodney Croome applied to the High Court of Australia for a ruling that Tasmania's anti-gay laws were constitutionally overridden by the Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994 and therefore invalid.

[26][32] Several amendments designed to streamline procedures relating to applications, the treatment of sensitive data and the decision-making process were agreed to by the council.

As of November 2020, a proposal to establish a compensation scheme for individuals convicted of same-sex sexual activity or cross dressing prior to 1997 and 2001 respectively is being drafted.

[35][36][37] On 13 April 2017, the Tasmanian Government, represented by Premier Will Hodgman, issued an official parliamentary apology to members of the LGBT community in Tasmania who had been historically affected by laws which criminalised homosexuality in the state until 1997.

Hodgman stated that "it is [the government's] view that the broader Tasmanian community would believe that people should never have been charged or convicted in the first place, even if it was thought at the time it was the right thing to do, it was not".

[59] This made Tasmania the fourth jurisdiction in Australia at the time to grant same-sex couples full joint adoption legal rights.

[67] In September 2013, the Act was amended to extend protections to transgender and intersex people, whilst also extending protections from offensive conduct to prohibit a person from offending, humiliating, intimidating, insulting or ridiculing another person on the basis of their actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

[68] Federal law also protects LGBTI people in Tasmania in the form of the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act 2013.

[69] In July 2021, a lawsuit was filed in court to banning transgender individuals in biological female spaces within Tasmania – due to recent laws on birth certificates implemented in 2019.

[70][71] In line with its transformation on other LGBT issues, Tasmania's approach to transgender people has changed from strong opposition to one of the most liberal in the world.

[74] In October 2018, the Liberal government introduced legislation to the Parliament repealing the requirement that one must be "unmarried" for a change of sex to be registered on one's birth certificate.

[75] The bill had originally been scheduled for debate by the Council in November 2018, but the government delayed consideration until March 2019, citing opposition to the amendments passed against its wishes in the Assembly.

[82] The laws were supported by transgender rights group Transforming Tasmania and long time LGBT activist Rodney Croome and opposed by the Tasmanian Liberal Party and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.