In this clip, Sean Hannity admits that "if you’re going to be a family-values candidate and a family-values politician, and you don’t live up to that, I think you should resign." He then goes on to say, essentially, that he won't officially call for Ensign's resignation because he doesn't "know where he stands." (On family values, I presume - as opposed to where he stands while fucking the wife of one of his employees.)
So do I understand correctly that Sean Hannity's position on political sex scandals demands resignation if and only if the offender is/was a "family-values candidate?" Because in the next clip, an infamous one from the August of 2008, Hannity says of John Edwards: "I'm wondering - if you can't keep the promise to your family, can't keep the promise to your wife, you're having an affair, you're lying about the affair repeatedly, why should the American people trust you when you say you're not gonna lie to them?"
Yes, Hannity and his friends attempt to make the case that Edwards ran on a moral values platform, which would make him as big a hypocrite as Ensign (and Vitter, Craig, Foley, McCain, Gingrich, Hyde, Livingston, et al), but I think a pretty thick line can be drawn between Edwards and men who join the Promisekeepers and rail against gay marriage on the grounds of protecting the institution.
Look, I've said it before, I don't care what other people do with their genitals. It's none of my business. Besides that, there are several thousands of years of recorded history that ought to have diminished the shock value of news that a man has fucked a woman who is not his wife. The issue at hand is hypocrisy. I don't think John Ensign should resign because he fucked a woman who was not his wife. I think John Ensign should resign because he fucked a woman who is not his wife while being publicly pious about the Christian definition of marriage. Like many of his friends, he's a fucking fraud who has been complicit in denying marriage to same-sex couples while desecrating the institution he was so desperate to protect.
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