“The well-known Mormon Tabernacle Choir was renamed Friday to strip out the word ‘Mormon’ in a move showing the faith’s new president is serious about ending shorthand names for the religion that have been used for generations by church members and previously promoted by the church.
The … singing group will now be called the ‘Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square,’ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement. It’s a nod to the home of the choir for the last 150 years, the Tabernacle, located on church grounds known as Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.”
“Church President Russell M. Nelson announced guidelines in August requesting that people stop using ‘Mormon’ or ‘LDS’ as substitutes for the church’s full name. He said “Latter-day Saints” was acceptable shorthand.”
— “Mormon no more: Tabernacle Choir renamed in big church shift,” Brady McCombs, Associated Press
In other branding news, Dunkin’ Donuts is now just “Dunkin.”
More:
“The world-renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir is changing its name to ‘The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square,'” Tabernacle Choir blog
The Supreme Court declined to reconsider federal appeals court rulings overturning bans on gay marriage in five states. Same-sex marriage is now legal in Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Indiana and Wisconsin. Six other states — Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming — bound by the same appellate rulings had stayed same-sex marriage pending the Supreme Court’s review, and should get with the program shortly. That means marriage equality is the law in 30 states and the District of Columbia.
There’s panic in the streets of Salt Lake City! U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby has ruled that a 2004 Utah state constitutional amendment and two state laws banning same-sex marriage violate gay and lesbian couples’ 14th Amendment rights to due process and equal protection under the law. The state measures claimed to be “defense of marriage” provisions, but the state failed to show that same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any manner, according to the judge.
The editors of the Salt Lake Tribune, leading newspaper in “largely Mormon, Republican, business-friendly” Utah, really wanted to endorse “the Beehive State’s favorite adopted son,” Mitt Romney. Instead, they concluded that Barack Obama has earned another term. Here’s why:
“From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: ‘Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?'”
“More troubling, Romney has repeatedly refused to share specifics of his radical plan to simultaneously reduce the debt, get rid of Obamacare (or, as he now says, only part of it), make a voucher program of Medicare, slash taxes and spending, and thereby create millions of new jobs. To claim, as Romney does, that he would offset his tax and spending cuts (except for billions more for the military) by doing away with tax deductions and exemptions is utterly meaningless without identifying which and how many would get the ax. Absent those specifics, his promise of a balanced budget simply does not pencil out.”
Creationists now claim a cave painting at Utah’s Kachina Bridge formation in south-eastern Utah proves that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. They are probably relying on the famed Biblical commentary “Alley Oop of Moo” rather than the conventional paleontological record.
More:
“Creationists Find Cave Painting of Dinosaur,” Maureen O’Connor, Gawker
“Debunking the ‘Dinosaurs’ of Kachina Bridge,” Brian Switek, Dinosaur Tracking, Smithsonian blog
“‘Proof of Creation’ Dino Drawing Just a Mud Stain,” Eric Niiler, Discovery News
Image (“New Discoveries at Lascaux”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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