Rodney Croome

Tasmania was the last Australian state to criminalise sex between men, with penalties of up to 21 years. Croome and Nick Toonen of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group took a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee, which ruled in Toonen v Australia in 1994 that the law breached the international covenant on civil rights. The federal parliament passed a privacy law in response, and the state finally repealed its law in 1997. Croome went on to lead Australian Marriage Equality's early years and to campaign for Tasmania's pioneering apology and expungement of old convictions.