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David M. Herszenhorn of NYT’s The Caucus reports that

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, on Tuesday admitted that he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff.

...

During college at Colorado State University, he became a born-again Christian and he and his wife, Darlene, were active in the Promise Keepers, an evangelical group.

Read the quote in context here.

For what its worth Sen. Ensign didn’t support Rick Santorum’s homophobic “Defense of Marriage” amendment to the constitution (which during the high tide of the Republican dominance of the government was the stick that beat so many otherwise progressive politicians like Sen. Clinton into voting for the under-the-circumstances less onerous, but still odious alternative, the Defense of Marriage Act.)

Update The NYT article was evidently mistaken… or maybe just not looking at the right time frame. In 2004 Ensign’s office issued a press release that said “protecting [marriage] is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.” (Via ThinkProgress.)

Also for what it’s worth, during the so-called Monica Lewinsky scandal when Ensign was running against Sen. Harry Reid in 1998 David Rosenbaum, also from the New York Times, wrote

No one knows how the scandal involving President Clinton will affect the race. A Democratic poll this month showed that Mr. Clinton is seen in a worse light by voters here than he is nationally.

Mr. Ensign has called for the President to resign. But he does not bring up the matter unless he is asked, and he is rarely asked.

He said it here.

The good news? Ensign may be conservative but he appears to be fairly live and let live about people’s personal affairs… and, I guess, Affairs.

On the other hand he did call for President Clinton to resign over his peccadilloes and so, I suppose, if he was honest he’d resign from his office as well.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight says

Remember, senators don’t have to govern, or to preside over any legislature. They don’t have any particular use for political capital, and other than their ability to be re-elected, they don’t have any particular reason to popular. That’s why Eliot Spitzer resigned and David Vitter (whom many Louisanans seem to have forgiven) didn’t. It’s why Roland Burris is still in the Senate.

He said it here.

Final thought though, goes to Matthew Yglesias, reflecting a few weeks ago on the different standards progressives and right-wing extremists are held to by constituents, peers, and the press, said

Logically speaking, since there’s only one of the two parties that puts a very high premium on the idea that state regulation of individual sexual behavior should be the main role of government, these allegations should be more damaging to Republicans. Hypocrisy on the part of the media is part of the story. But part of the issue, I think, is just partisan and ideological solidarity. A politician can survive a great deal if his co-partisans are willing to stand by him, and conservatives are much more inclined to stand by their man than are progressives.

He said it.

I too wish Ensign would either resign or else not resign but apologize instead for having sided so often with prigs in his party.

I’m not holding my breath for either.

See also Echidne who (half-seriously, she says) asks a serious question

Why does Senator Ensign need to apologize publicly for his affair but not for having belonged to Promise Keepers?

She said it here.

Good question, E.