We have moved on from anti-gay laws, but if we want to bring an end to their poisonous legacy, an apology is needed, writes Rodney Croome.

The Victorian Government's plan to expunge criminal records for gay sex is a welcome development, but such an initiative should also be accompanied by an official apology to repair the damage done.

Expunging records will benefit those men who were prosecuted. It will lift a burden of a criminal record from their shoulders, a burden that in many cases wrecked their lives. But only an apology can begin to repair the emotional trauma these men have suffered.

An apology will also benefit the far larger group of people who suffered, and still suffer, from the prejudice and stigma that was fostered by the criminalisation of homosexuality. Even when they weren't enforced, anti-gay criminal laws created the conditions for blackmail, social exclusion, hate crimes and suicide.

I know first-hand how damaging anti-gay laws were, and how cathartic an apology would be.

Tasmania was the last state to decriminalise in 1997, and the penalties for gay sex were the worst in the western world - a maximum 21 years in gaol.

As a young gay Tasmanian, I came out into a gay community that was terrorised by these laws and which was replete with stories of men fleeing the state, going to prison or killing themselves.

At the first gay community meeting I attended, in 1987, I was warned the police could be waiting outside to take down our car registration numbers to add to their list of "known homosexuals".

In 1988, when a small group of us decided to campaign for gay law reform by setting up a stall gathering petition signatures at Salamanca Market, the Hobart City Council banned the stall and the police arrested us for "promoting illegal activity".

As these anecdotes show, the laws against gay sex weren't just used to prosecute gay men. They were the justification for persecuting us as well.

An apology is the best way to put this awful past behind us. It will help heal the wounds so many gay men and their families still carry. It will send a message to those who come after us not to make the same mistake.

It will also send a message to other countries like Russia and Uganda - countries which are escalating their persecution of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (GLBTI) people - that they are on the wrong side of history.

In 2008, 20 years after ordering our arrests at Salamanca Market, the Hobart City Council apologised at an official reception at the Town Hall.

Directly after the Lord Mayor gave the apology, I formally accepted the council's contrition. As I looked down on the audience of about 300, I was surprised to see that everyone was sobbing, including those who hadn't even been at Salamanca Market during the arrests.

Many of those tears were shed not because of the events of 1988, but simply because a public authority cared enough to acknowledge how barbarously GLBTI people have been treated and to say "sorry" for that treatment.

At that moment I realised how profoundly important a broader apology would be.

In case you're not convinced about the value of an apology, I offer you this extract from an article published in the Launceston Examiner in 1976 titled "Why Noel Shot Himself and Bert Went to Gaol". The speaker is Bert:

If there had been reform in 1958 I would have been saved from the worst period of my life. I was 21 and living with another man of the same age. The police came to the house and asked who lived there. When we said we did, they asked where we slept and we pointed to the only bed in the house. We were taken to the police station, interviewed and charged with gross indecency. In the Supreme Court I pleaded guilty. I had no legal representation. The case was over in 10 minutes. I got three years.

We have moved on from that kind of mistreatment. We have moved on from the laws which allowed it. Now it is time for us to move on from the deep pain those laws caused, and bring an end to their poisonous legacy, by apologising for what was done.

Rodney Croome AM is an honorary lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania, and the national director of Australian Marriage Equality. View his full profile here.