SALT LAKE CITY -- One of Utah's most outspoken conservative activists, who directs a growing political action committee, is going into living rooms to deliver a warning: same-sex marriage leads to child exploitation and abuse.
That's the message from Cherilyn Eagar, former Republican Convention candidate for the U.S. House and Senate and director of the American Leadership Fund.
"Would we expose a child to a pornography situation where they're seeing bondage, S and M, and all these things that are at these events that they take their children to, that's part of the culture," said Eagar, referring specifically to Salt Lake City's Pride Parade.
Eagar is making presentations in volunteers' homes in different parts of the state with the Pride Parade and Festival as exhibit number one. She shows footage of floats with scantily clad people making crude gestures to portray what she says is so much a part of LGBT culture that children of same-sex parents are exposed to it regularly.
Eagar, who often said she has had many colleagues who are gay because she spent "years in the theater," says she makes her presentations to help families.
"If they're struggling with members of their family who are same-sex oriented, then this is all to help them," Eagar said.
Eagar is making waves with amped up rhetoric aimed at some of the most powerful corporations in Utah. In her blog, she writes a list of companies she said support the Pride Parade and Festival, including Zions Bank, Wells Fargo, Smith's, Petco, and Overstock.com.
Eagar writes, "Are you listening? Your participation in this heinous campaign is your endorsement of child abuse and exploitation."
In person with FOX 13 News, Eagar softened those words, saying CEOs may not know what happens at the pride parade or they may feel forced to participate for fear of backlash.
Eagar said the statistics back up her assertion that children raised by same-sex attracted parents suffer compared with children of heterosexual parents, and she cites a famous study for evidence.
"Mark Regnerus was here last week in Salt Lake and gave an updated report and he has more information to come," Eagar said.
Mark Regnerus is an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Texas who wrote a Journal Article in 2012 that has become a source of scorn in the sociology community. Regnerus' colleagues at the University of Texas, the American Sociological Association, and the Journal of Social Science that published the paper all now say Regnerus misrepresented his data.
Eagar sees those denunciations as the spurns and arrows of a conservative standing for principle in the face of liberal institutions.
"That's another example of our side being the subjects of a lot of bullying and hate speech," Eagar said.
Eagar went on to say that the University of Utah Sociology Department may be a part of the problem, because they may soon release research supporting same-sex parents.
"I know that there's research being developed from the University of Utah right now, and we have reason to believe that those that are participating in the research might bias that research," Eagar said.
Former state representative Jackie Biskupski, who is a lesbian with an adopted son, said Eagar's efforts won't amount to much.
"Eventually someone like her isn't going to be around anymore to say the kind of hurtful things they say," Biskupski said.
Eagar says she hears that a lot.
"We are often told we are on the wrong side of history, but I know the consequences. I've been following incidences of people whose lives have been destroyed," Eagar said.
