Going to settings > discussion and disallowing trackbacks and pingbacks does not resolve the problem. It would be great if your theme designers would create a free, full-width template, with a white or customizable background, with no sidebar, and no comments for those of us who are using our blogs to provide info rather than participate in discussion.
It's confusing to the reader to disable comments but see a link that says "Leave A Comment". I feel that's a design flaw, and paying about $30 to fix that simple issue doesn't seem like a good solution. Thanks for answering. Hopefully our discussion will help anyone who has the same question.