(Hobart, Australia) The city of Hobart has apologized to Tasmania’s LGBT community for sparking in 1988 what many consider Australia’s Stonewall riot.

In 1988, when homosexuality was still illegal, members of the LGBT community set up a stall in the public Salamanca market to lobby for a change in the law.

When someone complained to the city that the stall was promoting immoral and illegal activity, City Council voted to ban the group from operating at the market.

LGBT activists ignored the ban and the city sent in the police to shut down the stall. Gays and police clashed and when the dust cleared 130 gays and their allies were arrested.

It took another nine years for the laws against homosexuality to be repealed.

“We are sorry for the pain and trauma to all involved,” Rob Valentine, the Lord Mayor of Hobart, told Australia’s ABC television network. “We are also sorry that the actions we took may have encouraged ill-will and discrimination.”

The vote to issue the apology was not unanimous. Council member John Freeman said he was not sorry.

“Because what we did at the time was legal. They knew that. We knew that. I find no need at all to apologize for legal behavior [by police] he said.

Freeman also called the apology ” fatuous.”

“I don’t believe you can apologize for something that you weren’t involved in and only two of us were there at the time – neither of us think it is appropriate to apologize,” he said.

Nevertheless, Tasmanian LGBT rights activist Richard Hale said the apology will still be accepted.

“We have a lot more supporters in the states than we have detractors; so things have moved on quite a lot, and it is a bit sad that some people haven’t moved along with that,” he told ABC.