Equality advocates counter Prop. 8 Backers' anti-gay propaganda tour with new website

Courage Campaign Equality launches website to counter National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) anti-gay propaganda tour. As NOM's 23-stop "Summer for Marriage" bus tour begins, marriage equality advocates vow to "expose the right-wing's lies" about LGBT families at www.NOMTourTracker.com.

LOS ANGELES -- As the hate group National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) begins its month-long anti-gay bus tour of 16 eastern and Midwestern states, leading progressive advocacy organization Courage Campaign Equality has announced the launch of NOMTourTracker.com -- an interactive blog that will include photos, videos, interviews and on the ground updates from each NOM tour stop, as well as pro-equality counter events. The tour will culminate in Washington D.C. on August 15th.

"With the Defense of Marriage Act declared unconstitutional and NOM's allies telling Prop. 8 Federal Trial Judge Vaughn Walker they 'don't have any evidence' to support second class citizenship for millions of Americans, NOM's desperate, pro-bigotry propaganda tour will not go unanswered," said Courage Campaign founder and chairman Rick Jacobs. "NOMtourtracker.com will expose the right wing's homophobic lies and tell the true stories both of the loving families across our country seeking equality under the law and the communities who support them."

In addition to launching the NOM Tour Tracker, Courage Campaign Equality is working to support counter-events being organized by local equality groups during NOM's 23 stop "Summer for Marriage" tour -- including organizing live re-enactments of witness testimony from the historic federal Proposition 8 Trial and collecting videotaped statements from individuals and families who have come to understand the destructive consequences of discrimination against LGBT Americans.

One of the nation's largest progressive online activist communities at more than 700,000 members, Courage Campaign Equality collected nearly 140,000 petition signatures to support televising the federal Proposition 8 Trial back in January. After NOM's anti-gay allies successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to deny public access to the trial, Courage launched the Prop. 8 Trial Tracker, generating more than 2.3 million page views and 36,000 comments. The "NOM Tour Tracker" is being housed at the Prop. 8 Trial Tracker website.

"As public opinion continues to shift in support of marriage equality, it's clear that the greatest antidote to the lies at the foundation of NOM's bigotry is truth," Jacobs added. "That's why we fought to get the federal Prop. 8 trial televised and why we launched EqualityonTrial.org -- an unprecedented national campaign to bring the fight for equality out of the courtroom and into the hearts and minds of everyday Americans. NOMTourtracker.com will go a step further, giving the media, the communities under siege by right wing fringe groups and the public at large an opportunity to see the contrast between those advocating equality, love and family with those using debunked lies, fear-mongering and appeals to bigotry to deny basic rights to their friends, neighbors and co-workers."