Parameterized Query PHP/SQL Server - php

Question

I have a web form that enters event details into a database to be listed on a website. The form captures the name of a photo, event title, a date to unlist the event, a sort number, a description, and a bit flag "Mass".
The description field is a plain text field. I know that I should probably change the field to rich text, but that is for a day when I have time to explore how to do that. Anyways... I've been adding HTML characters into my text to format it. I find that the slash of closing characters like < / strong> is being treated as an escape character rather than part of the text. How do I tell my code to not escape?
The code:
//connect to the database.
$serverName = "livedata";
$connectionInfo = array( "Database"=>"administration", "UID"=>"User", "PWD"=>"PASSWORD", "LoginTimeout"=>60 );
$conn = sqlsrv_connect( $serverName, $connectionInfo);
if( $conn === false ) {
die( print_r( sqlsrv_errors(), true));
}
/* Set up the parameterized query. */
$tsql = "insert into tblevents (Photo, title, Unlist, Sort, Description, Par_num, mass ) values(?,?,?,?,?,?,?)";
/* Set parameter values. */
$dt = $_POST['unlist'];
if ($dt == ""){
$dt = null;
}
$Sort = $_POST['sort'];
if ($Sort == "" ){
//query to get the max of sort in the database items
//+1 sort
$sql2 = "SELECT tblevents.Par_Num, Max(tblevents.Sort) AS MaxOfSort FROM parishevents.dbo.tblevents GROUP BY tblevents.Par_Num HAVING (((tblevents.Par_Num)=" . $_POST['par_num'] . "));";
//echo "SQL2: " . $sql2 . "<br><br>";
$stmt2 = sqlsrv_query( $conn, $sql2);
if( $stmt2 === false ) {
die( print_r( sqlsrv_errors(), true));
}
$result2 = sqlsrv_query($conn, $sql2);
while($row2 = sqlsrv_fetch_array($result2)) {
$Sort = $row2['MaxOfSort'] +1;
}
if(isset($_POST['mass'])){
if($_POST['mass'] == "on"){
$mass = -1;
}
else{
$mass = 0;
}
}else{
$mass = 0;
}
$params = array($_POST['photo'], $_POST['title'], $dt, $Sort, $_POST['description'], $_POST['par_num'], $mass);
/* Prepare and execute the query. */
$stmt = sqlsrv_query($conn, $tsql, $params);
/* Free statement and connection resources. */
sqlsrv_free_stmt($stmt);
}