A man with Tourettes’ syndrome takes a two weeks vacation in Anchorage to visit his step-mother. Said step-mother later reports he’d been acting unusual and violent in the course of the vacation. While on a plane trip back, he acts unruly — kicking people repeatedly, refusing to listen to directions from the flight attendants, quoting Bible passages at people repeatedly and loudly, refusing to allow the window-seat passenger by to get to the bathroom. He told the window-seat passenger, in fact, that his blood would be on her and he wouldn’t let her leave no matter what. He is later restrained by several flight attendants and, in the process of being so subdued, he tries to bite one of the other passengers on the leg. Once the flight is diverted to Nashville, police arrest the man and the flight continues on its way.

Guess which part of the story is getting everyone’s attention? Answer (and links) below the fold.

That’s right — the bible quoting part. Every headline blares out, “airlines subdue and police arrests Bible-quoting passenger” uncritically, only mentioning the other salient details halfway through the article, if at all. Some sites even say he was arrested solely for quoting the Bible.

It seems only the atheist sites are catching onto the fact that the media (and the Christians themselves) are spinning this as anti-Christian, or even just leaving out vast swathes of the available information, never amending the story after reporting uncritically that he was arrested for being a Bible-thumper. In fact, some explicitly say he was arrested for quoting the Good Book (sorry — this article actually does appear to be unique to this otherwise car rental spam looking place).

Now why is this? My best guess is, the religious have developed a persecution complex.