A self-described “slut for faith” offers a tip for marital bliss: Don’t fake it. That is, don’t get married in a house of God unless you need his blessing to make it real.

Conservative NYT-watchers will rightly charge that an article in today’s paper on a public school Bible curriculum is slanted against the creators of the curriculum, a North Carolina-based outfit with deep Christian Right ties called the The National Council for Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. But the problem with the article is not the Times‘ subtle derision of the Council’s claims; it’s the paper’s failure to state in clear and uncondescending terms that the Council’s claims are factually wrong. The Times notes that the Council’s textbooks present the U.S. as a Bible-based nation and teach that NASA findings suggest that the world has stopped its orbit twice, possible proof that Bible stories about the God making the sun stand still are literally true. But the U.S., as religious as it may be, is not a “Bible-based nation.” And no such NASA data exists. So why does the paper play “on the one hand/on the other hand” at all? Why not simply report the news: As many as 312 public school districts are teaching a conservative Protestant theological worldview that, in this case, depends on faulty history and phony science, as nonsectarian fact. Conservatives decry “moral relativism,” and we agree: Some things are just plain wrong.