The Creation Museum and the Cincinnati Zoo have broken up a partnership after the zoo, which receives public support through a tax levy, received angry calls and e-mails.
Dan Horn of The Enquirer reports that a ticket deal offered $25.95 tickets to both the zoo Festival of Lights and the museum’s Bethlehem’s Blessing, which features a live nativity and the streets of Bethlehem.
Adelle M. Banks writes this story for Religion News Service:
The Cincinnati Zoo has dropped a business arrangement with the nearby Creation Museum after it received numerous complaints about a joint Christmas promotion.
Officials at the museum expressed disappointment that their plans to offer a reduced price on a package of tickets to both attractions had ended after less than three days.
“I am … personally saddened that this organization I esteem so highly would find it necessary to back out of this relationship,” said Ken Ham, founder and president of the museum in Petersburg, Ky. “At the same time, I have learned that the zoo received hundreds of complaints from what appear to be some very intolerant people, and so I understand the zoo’s perspective.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer said zoo officials found themselves embroiled in a debate between creationists who support the museum and evolutionists who oppose it after agreeing to a deal that would reduce entry to the zoo’s “Festival of Lights” and the museum’s “Bethlehem’s
Blessings.”
“It’s not about us endorsing them or them endorsing us,” said Chad Yelton, a spokesman for the zoo, told the newspaper. “That’s wasn’t the intention of anything we were doing.”
