Sen. David Vitter, who has built his political career around “family values” and railed against same-sex marriage, admitted to “a very serious sin in my past” after his telephone number appeared among those associated with an escort service operated by the so-called “D.C. Madam.”

Vitter has admitted that he had contacted a D.C. escort service sometime before 2004, apparently while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, and yesterday, Jeanette Maier, the Canal Street madam of a high-price brothel in New Orleans, told WDSU-TV that Vitter frequented her establishment in the mid-1990s. In addition, the Shreveport Times reports that the former chair of President Bush’s Louisiana state finance organization, Boysie Bollinger, said Vitter’s relationship with prostitutes was known to insiders when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Vitter has touted himself as a “moral values” leader throughout his political career, and ardently opposed same-sex marriage, saying: “I’m a conservator who opposes radically redefining marriage, the most important social institution in human history.” Vitter has been a sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which seeks to preclude the recognition of same-sex marriage.