Compare and Contrast

Two wholly separate, yet somehow similar, news stories:

Kim Davis Freed From Jail in Kentucky Gay Marriage Dispute

And…

Muslim flight attendant suspended for refusing to serve alcohol, files discrimination complaint: advocacy group

Basically, both boil down to “I don’t want to do my job because my interpretation of my religion says not to. And any attempt to either make me do my job, or punish me for not doing my job, is discrimination. Help, help I’m being oppressed. Come and see the oppression inherent in the system.”

It’ll be interesting to see how many people who cheer Kim Davis *also* cheer Charee Stanley. Somehow… I suspect there won’t be a whole lot of overlap.

A few hours ago I watched live CNN as a rally formed around the release of Davis. While I thought jailing her was at best monumentally silly, I was rather more disturbed by the ridiculous rhetoric used by the likes of Mike Huckabee. I become further convinced than I already was that there is a strain of fundamentalist Christianity that *craves* martyrdom, that sees being oppressed as the highest display of worth. And since, let’s face it, they’re *not* being oppressed (certainly not any form of oppression that anyone burned at the stake or shunned by their family or beheaded or sold into slavery would recognize as oppression), they need to invent oppression in order to feel holy.