Of all the many ironies surrounding Congressman Mark Foley’s forced resignation from office, one of the most delectable is this: While the Republicans were trying to divert the voters’ attention from Mr. Foley’s embarrassing emails to teenage boys, the head of Britain’s Conservative Party was endorsing gay unions.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday, party leader David Cameron declared:

“There's something special about marriage. It's not about religion. It's not about morality. It's about commitment.

“When you stand up there, in front of your friends and your family, in front of the world, whether it's in a church or anywhere else, what you're doing really means something.

“Pledging yourself to another means doing something brave and important. You are making a commitment. You are publicly saying: it's not just about me, me, me anymore. It is about we -- together, the two of us, through thick and thin.

“That really matters.

“And by the way, it means something whether you're a man and a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man. That's why we were right to support civil partnerships, and I'm proud of that.”

There’s no excuse for Mark Foley’s attempting to gratify his gay urges by flirting with minors on the Internet. But there is, perhaps, an explanation: It’s dark and lonely in the closet. It’s also extremely frustrating. If the frustration is deep enough, and long enough, it can drive an otherwise sensible man to do stupid things. If Mr. Foley had been free to marry a man of his choice, instead of having to constantly conceal and repress his own nature, his story might have had a happier end.

The Republicans might be happier as well. They might not be about to lose control of Congress.

But it was the Republicans, let us remember, who have spent the last few years frantically trying to write bans on gay unions into state constitutions and the U.S. Constitution itself –- trying, in effect, to take the issue not only out of the hands of “activist judges,” but any future elected lawmakers who might be disposed to let gays marry. It’s an attempt to buck the tide of history –- never a wise move in politics.

It is therefore poetic justice that Republicans have been done in by their own shameless pandering to the Religious Right.

The right to marry is a fundamental human right. So fundamental, in fact, that the law does not deny this right to convicted murderers, rapists and child molesters. Denying it to gays and lesbians is unjust. It stigmatizes people not for what they do, but for who they are. It says, in effect, that no matter how fine and upstanding a person you may be, if you were born a certain way, you are less entitled to the basic rights of a citizen than the most depraved psychopath behind bars.

The leader of Britain’s Conservative Party has endorsed gay unions. Berlin’s openly gay mayor is being spoken of as Germany’s next chancellor. Gay unions or marriages, and gays in the military, are becoming the norms for democratic countries in the developed world.

Early in his administration, President Bush seemed to be moving with the times. He appointed an openly gay ambassador to Romania, who took up his post in Bucharest with his partner of six years by his side. Then the Religious Right jerked Mr. Bush’s chain.

The Religious Right is fighting a losing battle. Conservative Christians might do better to heed the advice of Christian writer Dorothy Sayers. Sayers is best remembered as the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, but she also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy and wrote light verse, including this piquant -- and pertinent –- little quatrain:

As I grow older and older
And totter towards the tomb
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom.