Thanks, I am having a pretty good day - all considered! I hope the same for you too.

Unfortunately, the first question you ask here, "shouldn’t Mormon organizations entries be rejected too" opens up an entirely different can of worms: normative culture.

With that in mind, the answer would be no: because preventing Mormons from a parade in Salt Lake City because they are Mormons is patently absurd and would never stand - but discriminating against the Church of Satan, for example, from painting themselves in red white and blue and making a display for themselves would be well inside of the normative culture ( and the rules for discriminatory discretion ) - because no matter how they tried to mask their image and intent, their mere presence is inappropriate and communicates information that is out of bounds for the event. I would also be OK with discriminating against them.

Any Mormon organization, to be part of the parade as a purely religious demonstration - without any cohesion to the theme of the parade, would be unacceptable even in SLC ( and against the rules ) a major faux paux and I am sure would not go over very well. I assume that these groups do keep to the rules and guidelines for purely patriotic displays, sans the religious, cultural, or political messaging. If not, that is a valid point of contention.

In the case of the LGBTQ, they are outside of the normative culture in SLC, much like the Church of Satan example. If this was in San Francisco, that would be a different story - and I would be surprised to see a LGBTQ group discriminated out of literally anything there - and I am OK with that because that is the normative culture there.

Perhaps, in time things will change - and everywhere will be like SF ( modern day sodom and gomorrah ) - but I am big on respecting, preserving and supporting the great diversity of America - and not as interested in making everything homogeneous to that standard ( the SF standard ) - as ironic as that probably sounds to you right now. I just don't see that as a desirable goal - so I give a lot of slack. I always thought that a Cobb Salad - with it's distinct and different identifiable pieces, is much more delicious and preferable to a melting pot where everything is the same. Makes things interesting!