When I wrote about the Mark Sanford sex scandal, I had no idea that it might be considered even remotely related to gay marriage. Well, apparently it is -- at least to some people. Rod Dreher explains:

The argument goes like this:

1. Mark Sanford is a social conservative who advocated against same-sex marriage rights.

2. But by having an adulterous affair, he dishonored his own marriage vows.

3. Therefore it is hypocritical for him -- and by extension, other social conservatives -- to argue against same-sex marriage.

4. Because some opponents of same-sex marriage are unfaithful to their spouses, there is no good reason to oppose same-sex marriage.

It's an absurd argument, but that doesn't stop more than a few people from pushing it. If you are one of the people who find its logic persuasive, though, then surely you agree that the arrest of a gay Duke University official on charges of having prostituted his adopted five-year-old son on the Internet is a convincing argument against allowing gay adoptions.

It is in no way a convincing argument against gay adoption, and no argument at all. Neither does Sanford's failings have a thing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the case against same-sex marriage.

As it turns out, the man accused of prostituting his five year old was also very active in the Episcopal Church. Should such truly horrific acts reflect badly on the church? According to some, yes, it should.

The poor child subject to this sordid event should symbolize the horrid evil being promoted by [The Episcopal Church].

I'm sure some will say this awful case implicates Duke University as well. Considering the way so many at Duke behaved towards the falsely accused Lacrosse team, there will probably be people who will want to retaliate by somehow using this case against Duke, but I don't see much of a connection. Maybe a double standard, though, were the case to be ignored or go unreported. (Uproar over the innocent Lacrosse players, and silence over the pedophile.) So far, the latter does seem to be receiving considerable press attention -- at Duke and elsewhere. (CNN, however, does not mention that the adopted boy is black.)

The frenzy to blame people other than the accused reminds me of the way some people reacted to the murderer at the Holocaust Museum.

In what has become a numbingly familiar pattern over the decades, when deranged killers strike, people with political axes to grind will invoke their favorite demons for blame. In what I'll call the "Columbine tradition," the Columbine killers were said by leftists to be a product of "the gun culture," and by rightists to be a product of the "climate" of the 1960s. (And, of course, "depravity on the Internet.")

Why people don't focus on the individuals themselves, I don't know. It would be one thing if a killer were acting on behalf of (or with the approval of) someone else, or an actual identifiable organization. But when a murder is committed by a single individual, it makes about as much sense to blame "the right" or "the left" (much less a "climate" created by either) as it would to blame the Republican or Democratic Party if he happened to belong to one of them.

This stuff gets a little tedious.

MORE: Townhall writer Mike Adams implicates the deceased Michael Jackson for a symbolic coincidence:

That Frank Lombard was arrested on the day of Michael Jackson's death is highly symbolic. Christians need to take a break from worshipping this culture and the idols it produces.

If it weren't all so predictable.... Really, I feel as if I've written this post a hundred times over the years.