Utah's top religion stories of 2004

Utahns in 2004 joined the rest of the nation in weighing in on such issues as gay marriage and public displays of the Ten Commandments. But some of the state's top religion stories of 2004 were uniquely Utah's.

LDS general conference protest zones, for example. Salt Lake City and street preachers spent most of 2004 battling in court after the city limited the preachers to special buffer zones. The impetus: an October 2003 scuffle between protesters and conferencegoers involving religious attire.

Among Utah's top religion stories of 2004, as chosen by the Deseret Morning News religion and ethics team:

• A federal judge rules that buffer zones created by Salt Lake leaders to keep the peace during The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' semiannual conferences are constitutional.

• The LDS Church names two new members to its Quorum of the Twelve after the deaths of Elders Neal A. Maxwell and David B. Haight . They are replaced by Dieter F. Uchtdorf and David A. Bednar.

• Utahns join voters in 10 other states in passing bans on gay marriage. Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah asks local priests to craft ceremonies to be used in blessing gay unions within her jurisdiction. The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issues a statement saying the church "favors measures that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman and that do not confer legal status on any other sexual relationship."

• The Rev. Ravi Zacharias becomes the first internationally renowned evangelical to speak in the LDS Tabernacle since 1899.

• Sister Marjorie Hinckley dies at age 92 after almost 67 years of marriage to LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.

• Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, speaks in West Valley City.

• The LDS Church announces it will build a temple in Draper, its third in the Salt Lake Valley.

• LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley receives a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civil honor.

• A federal judge rules that a Ten Commandments display in a Duchesne city park — on an island of privately owned land within Roy Park — is constitutional.

• The Mormon Tabernacle Choir celebrates the 75th anniversary of its weekly TV and radio broadcast "Music and the Spoken Word." The choir is inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

• A $3.7 million dollar construction and remodeling project is completed at the Newman Center, the home away from home for Catholics at the University of Utah.