The current version on the theme web site is v2.2.3. Per the changelog, html for those entities is being stripped out to address XSS:
April 22 2015 – 2.2.3
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– Updated to OptionTree 2.5.4
– XSS security fixes
– Removed tracking code field
– Added additional Google fonts
To revert the blog heading you could copy the alx_blog_title() theme function to a child theme functions.php file and remove the “esc_attr()” functions for $heading and $subheading:
function alx_blog_title() {
global $post;
$heading = esc_attr( ot_get_option('blog-heading') );
$subheading = esc_attr( ot_get_option('blog-subheading') );
if($heading) {
$title = $heading;
} else {
$title = get_bloginfo('name');
}
if($subheading) {
$title = $title.' <span>'.$subheading.'</span>';
}
return $title;
}
To change the copyright, copy footer.php to a child theme and change this:
<p><?php echo esc_attr( ot_get_option( 'copyright' ) ); ?></p>
to this:
<p><?php echo ot_get_option( 'copyright' ); ?></p>