Missing the logic of recognizing his own would-be-marriage

Andrew quotes a letter from Bill McColl to the Post:

I am a gay man. My partner lives 12 time zones away. We are in a monogamous relationship, and we do not cheat. We get to see each other only twice a year for less than three weeks. Although he is a professional in marketing, the United States will not let him immigrate because he was not picked in the lottery. The federal government would not recognize our relationship if I married him.

The government will not allow us to be together. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign (and former House speaker Newt Gingrich and senator Larry Craig) oppose same-sex marriages even as they do their best to destroy the institution of marriage in the United States.

I pay my taxes. I served in the military. I was an Eagle Scout. In short, I am a good, but second-class, citizen. It's very hard not to be infuriated by the double standards

I concur with the fury in the first and last graphs. Unfortunately, the middle one is specious. That Sanford and Ensign oppose Bill's right to marry his partner is contemptible, but this has nothing to do with their infidelity.

To understand why, assume the counterfactual. Suppose Sanford and Ensign had been perfectly faithful to their own partners. Dream husbands who've done every caring thing a man can do. In fact, let's be even more ridiculous and posit that their wives are so enamored they often experience orgasms just daydreaming about these hypothetical wonderful husbands of theirs.

Would such exceptionalness give Sanford and Ensign any more ground to stand on in rejecting Bill's relationship? NO--regardless of their personal lives, Bill's relationship and the sex of his partner is none of their business. And that Bill's would-be-marriage is monogamous or if it were open and promiscuous or if Bill were to also have a secret mistress stowed away somewhere in Scandanavia--this would also be none of their business.