Louis J. Marinelli has canceled his Summer Equality Tour, which was supposed to launch in San Diego, Aug. 14.
The cancellation was due to conflicts with a similar tour by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).
“Unfortunately, due to competition that arose out of the HRC bus tour with the same name, starting the same weekend with a very similar objective that was recently announced, we won’t be doing our tour at this time,” said Marinelli, who founded the National Organization for Marriage Equality.
His organization and his tour are in direct response to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a conservative anti-marriage equality group. Last year, Marinelli organized the Summer of Marriage Tour to oppose same-sex marriage. He resigned from the organization in April 2011 and is now an outspoken critic of NOM and a self-proclaimed “conservative Republican supporting marriage equality.”
Marinelli said, “I feel compelled to revisit the cities of last year’s marriage tour to meet the thousands of people who came out to meet discrimination and bigotry head on in the streets of their hometowns.”
