A grassroots campaign calling for repeal of Nevada's ban on gay marriage launched Thursday.

A coalition of groups launched Freedom Nevada with press conferences in Las Vegas and Reno.

“It really isn't complicated. Love is love,” Vivian Wright-Bolton, who is in a committed same-sex relationship, told the AP.

Nevada lawmakers last year took the first step in a multi-year process to repeal Nevada's ban. A second vote is needed in 2015 before voters in 2016 get to decide whether to change the state constitution to allow gay couples to marry.

The coalition's launch comes the same week as Nevada decided to drop its defense in a legal challenge to the ban.

(Related: Nevada withdraws defense of gay marriage ban that invoked bigamy, incest.)

Reno Mayor Bob Cashell said that allowing gay couples to marry could increase tourism.

“To be competitive we need to continue to welcome a diversity of business to our great state,” Cashell, a Republican, is quoted as saying by the AP. “For somebody who has been married 49 years, I can't imagine someone telling me I couldn't marry the person I love.”

Freedom Nevada members include the ACLU of Nevada, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Freedom to Marry and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest LGBT rights advocate.