This week marks 30 years since the Homosexual Law Reform Act was passed by Parliament.
Fran Wilde was the MP who tabled that Bill and led the public campaign, and on Friday she took Newshub behind the scenes at Te Papa to look through its hidden collection of the polarising political campaign.
There are badges, placards, letters and pamphlets - just some of the tools used by Homosexual Law Reform campaigners to court public opinion in the mid-1980s.
"We were a little surprised at the size of the campaign against it, so we had to gear up to fight it," Ms Wilde says.
She remembers the 16 month campaign as "ugly and nasty".
This collection is held by Te Papa in its Wellington storage facility.
It's not just material from the reform campaign, but also pieces from wider gay and lesbian history.
"A lot of these objects, they may seem humble and ephemeral but they talk about really profound and significant moments in time," says curator Stephanie Gibson.
"Especially when there's been a lot of unrest in society, a lot of questioning."
Among the collection is a pamphlet used during the reform campaign to dispel commonly-believed myths around homosexuality.
"Basically we wanted the public to understand that gay men were just ordinary New Zealanders," Ms Wilde says.
There's also a placard which reads "I signed 27 times" - referring to a now-discredited petition organised by reform opponents.
"I remember this sign - it was in our side of the crowd," Ms Wilde says.
Ms Wilde had her own collection of material related to the reform, but it was lost two years ago in the Kilbirnie Storage fire.
The destroyed material included her own notes as well as thousands of letters written to her during the campaign.
"It was pretty devastating, because that was a piece of New Zealand history that was there," she says.
"And I should have put it in the national archives actually."
The loss makes this collection that much more important.
Newshub.