On July 9, 1986 in an editorial headlined "High noon for reform" the Herald urged Parliament to pass a bill which would decriminalise homosexual acts between consenting men over the age of 16.
All the signs suggested the Homosexual Law Reform Bill would be defeated by the narrowest of margins in a conscience vote that night.
The Herald argued that the bill mattered because social stability rested on voluntary adherence to respectable law.
"That respect is lessened when one element of the criminal code is held in contempt by those whom it purports to control as well as by the standards of civil liberties which inspire modern democracies," it said.
"The country, surely, has been subjected to a debate too long and too rancorous to end in abject acceptance of unsatisfactory law."
