South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has never shied away from talking about his religious faith. So perhaps it should have come as no surprise that he invoked “God’s law” throughout his long, rambling press conference on June 24 — after going missing in Buenos Aires for six days — to confess his yearlong extramarital affair with an Argentine woman. But in acknowledging his infidelity, Sanford was actually admitting that he had broken a state law: adultery is still punishable in South Carolina by up to a year in prison and a $500 fine. Fortunately for Sanford, the statute is an unenforced relic. But even if he faces no criminal penalties, Sanford is painfully aware that he will pay in other ways. “I guess where I’m trying to go with this is that there are moral absolutes, and that God’s law indeed is there to protect you from yourself,” Sanford said at the state capitol in Columbia. “And there are consequences if you breach that. This press conference is a consequence.”
It didn’t take long for Sanford to experience the range of other unpleasant consequences of his behavior. Even as pundits were writing the political obituary of a fiscal conservative many had touted as a GOP presidential hopeful for 2012, The State newspaper of Columbia published personal e-mails the governor had sent to his paramour, named Maria.
