My high school class ring was all bling. BHS, for Bountiful High School, stood out boldly on one side of a ruby stone. On the opposing side were the numerals ’71. It was gold and heavy and showy, and I liked it when it was new. But, the most durable feature of the ring didn’t come from the skillful hand of a jeweler. It came from church ball. It was during my sophomore year. Winter. A cold junior varsity locker room was being used by the local church basketball teams for a tournament. Earlier in the year I’d had a locker in that room as part of the school football team. The locks securing the faded green cubicles now belonged to the players not skilled enough to make the varsity hoops squad.

After the burning of the beloved Provo Tabernacle, residents wondered what the future would hold for that plot of ground.

Following a long winter and spring in Winter Quarters — where 700 homes had been built and the camp of 12,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints divided into 22 wards — the first company was readied to make the journey. Some of the most seasoned and reliable brethren were selected, and at first the 148 in number were to be men only.

There are nearly seven million Mormons in America. This is the number the Mormons themselves use. It's not huge. Seven million is barely 2 percent of the country's population. It is the number of people who subscribe to Better Homes and Gardens magazine. London boasts seven million people. So does San Francisco. It's a million more people than live in the state of Washington; a million less than in the state of Virginia. It's so few, it's the same number as were watching the January 24, 2012, Republican debate. In fact, worldwide, there are only about fourteen million Mormons. That's fourteen million among a global population just reaching seven billion. Fourteen million is the population of Cairo or Mali or Guatemala. It's approximately the number of people who tune in for the latest hit show on network television every week. Fourteen million Americans ate Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant in 2011. That's how few fourteen million is.

Eight outstanding Utahns, including a high leader in the LDS Church, were honored Tuesday at the 52nd annual Bronze Minuteman Awards Dinner of the Utah National Guard. In a ceremony at the Little America Hotel, the award recipients were President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake Chamber President Lane Beattie, Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank; Mark and Sally Dietlein of the Hale Center Theater; Master Sgt. (Ret.) Mark B. Harrison; Gail Miller, who built a Utah business empire with her late husband Larry; and, in a surprise announcement, Patti Griffith, who organized the program but was unaware of her award before her name was announced.

Dancing with the Stars has upped the ante this year by including the Empress of Soul, Gladys Knight, as a contestant on their fourteenth season. The seven-time Grammy winner is sure to wow audiences just like she has done on the stage for over 40 years. The vocalist is known for classic soul tracks like "If I Were Your Woman," "Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)," and "Midnight Train to Georgia." In addition, she is BET royalty, receiving the Best Living Legend honoree at the 2008 BET Awards. In an in-depth interview, a jovial Mrs. Knight talked about everything from Dancing with the Stars to Mitt Romney to Tina Turner to the late, great Whitney Houston.

The Latter-day Saint practice of vicarious baptism on behalf of the dead is once again a focus of controversy. In the past few weeks, it's been portrayed in the news media and on the web as unbiblical, ghoulish, bizarre, shameful, vicious, anti-Semitic, immoral, hateful, an exercise in "black magic" and (by some extremists) possibly even illegal. A national television commentator recently named President Thomas S. Monson among "the worst people in the world" for presiding over the practice. It's high time for the view of a very respected non-Mormon scholar to be heard above the noise.

WITH MITT Romney’s candidacy for president, the Mormon church approaches an epochal moment in its deep engagement with American politics. The nation, too, is at a threshold - entering, perhaps, a more spacious public understanding of many once-marginal groups. In the Mormon case, it’s been a long time coming. Romney may be a front-runner for the Republican nomination, and his father George may once have been a serious candidate for president, but the first Mormon to run for president was the first Mormon himself.

Jokes about sacred underpants have reached epidemic proportions, thanks to Mitt Romney’s presidential bid and the musical masterpiece by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, “The Book of Mormon”. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to give it its full name, is fighting back. A huge advertising campaign features ordinary people doing ordinary things—a white man sporting a beard, a black man sporting a moustache and a young skateboarder flying through the air—with the tag line: “I’m a Mormon.” The snag is, not everyone will buy the idea that Mormons are just like the rest of us. They don’t get drunk. They have large families, stable marriages and a three-month supply of food in the larder in case of Armageddon. They are usually clean-cut and neatly dressed (the facial hair in the “I’m a Mormon” ads is thankfully atypical). And they have a passion for business.

Among other ideas, The Family: A Proclamation to the World, emphasizes the importance or gender identity and roles. For the purpose of this post, I will focus on several sentences that relate to the responsibilities of parents within the family as they rear children.