Mark Souder’s affair to remember

As the Mark Souder scandal shows, clinging to antiquated views on sex only makes a mockery of Republicans’ preachings

Mark Souder announces his resignation after it was revealed he had had an affair with a staffer. Photograph: Frank Gray/AP Photograph: Frank Gray/AP

If he wants forgiveness, Republican congressman Mark Souder had better hope God digs irony.

The “family values” Christian lawmaker from Indiana, who has a long history of bashing extramarital sex, was revealed on Tuesday to have had an affair with a staffer.

In the next of many layers of irony to this story, Souder filmed a video with his mistress six months ago singing the virtues of abstinence. The Washington Post reports that the “affair began after [the aide Tracy] Jackson was hired in 2004” – which means he was more than likely having sex with her at the time.

The congressman, married and a father of three, in 2004 lectured former CDC official Jonathan Zenilman about the perils of extramarital sex, comparing it to date rape and sexual harassment, reported Zenilman’s son Avi Zenilman in Vanity Fair.

It’s the kind of story that even the most imaginative fiction writers would have a hard time coming up with, and it illuminates the supreme absurdities of the social conservative movement that underlies the GOP.

For this is no isolated incident. Souder is the latest in a long line of values-clutching Republican lawmakers and luminaries to unveil their breathtaking hypocrisy by demanding on camera that we all live puritanical lives while privately doing the exact opposite. Those who immediately come to mind are Mark Sanford, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, John Ensign and Newt Gingrich.

As the Guardian’s Richard Adams put it: “On the scale of newsworthy events, ‘Republican in sex scandal’ sits somewhere alongside ‘Pope is Catholic’ in terms of predictability.” But on the ironic scale, this probably surpasses Bristol Palin’s speaking tour promoting abstinence after getting pregnant at the age of 17 and publicly calling abstinence “not realistic at all”.

Of course, Democrats are no strangers to sex scandals, but they don’t invoke the same grandiose pretences about morals and values that Republicans habitually do, so it’s a little less embarrassing for them. These matters, while serving as enticing fodder for social conservatives, are simply irrelevant to the political debate and governance of the country.

Nevertheless, the irony in this story still isn’t up yet. Souder, who literally cried for “forgiveness” over having “sinned against God” in his resignation announcement Tuesday, has throughout his career been unforgiving in his quest to strip college aid from students convicted of the victimless crime of drug possession.

The significance of this episode is only partly about Republicans clinging to antiquated and counterproductive views on sex – ie continuing to promote abstinence in the 21st century – while actually making a mockery of their own preachings. It’s also about how these lawmakers have systematically worked to sharpen the national microscope on the private lives of public figures, in effect setting the traps that derail their own and others’ careers down the road.

Souder, in his resignation speech, lamented the “poisonous environment of Washington, DC” politics, where “any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain.” Adultery is always wrong but, ethics violations aside, it’s because of people like Souder that his – and other politicians’ – personal escapades are such a prominent feature of the national discourse, and are more accurate determinants of political survival than actions that actually affect people’s lives.

The determined Republican witch-hunt in the late 1990s against President Bill Clinton over his sex life – and its resulting national obsession – was the stuff of legend. And, since the theme of this article is irony, it’s hard to forget that the moral policeman leading that charge was GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who admitted he was cheating on his wife at the time, and is currently sporting his third marriage.

It’s not unexpected, then, that the reddest states, which tend to be the stuffiest about moral and family values, also have higher rates of divorce and teen pregnancy than the blue states. The moral of this story, if you will, is that those who place the strongest emphasis on imposing morality on others often tend to have the hardest time imposing it on themselves.