Should I feel bad for the site's members?
I'm not sure if you should feel bad for them, but you probably shouldn't feel glee at their problems.
How many people on Ashley Madison are single? How many have the permission of their spouse to sleep around? How many have used the site with their spouse to find other people because they enjoy it? How many people signed up and created an account on the thought that they might cheat, perhaps as a fantasy, but never did?
In all cases, it is probably a minority. All those added together might still be a minority, but we shouldn't celebrate the outing of them via the hack. After all, no one reading the hack's material would be able to tell what the actual circumstances of a party is based upon the data dump. The joy that people about over cackling over the presumed cheaters is demonstrative of a Puritanical society that is afraid of talking candidly about sex. It is a symptom of the anti-sex disease of Anglo society.
How many people are ten years into a marriage with two kids, five and seven, when the sex just dries up? Maybe it is because of a medical condition for one spouse or maybe something else is going on, but the lack of sex makes the person miserable. The rest of the relationship is great and loving, but he's not getting the nooky that can make him truly happy. He's talked to his wife about getting a hall pass, but she's said no, that makes her uncomfortable. He appears to have an outwardly great life, but the lack of sex just niggles him. A thorn that works his way into his life and slowly starts to poison the relationship. The lack of sex threatens to bring down everything that's great about his life.
Does he let the lack of sex slowly twist inside himself to the point where it becomes a serious issue, and that one night at Chuck E. Cheese with the kids running around being a pain, he's had a horrible day at work, she's venting to him her frustrations about her extended family, and the lack of sex is just one more thing that causes the relationship to implode?
Or does he cheat and maintain a loving relationship with his wife and children while getting a little something on the side? The sexual tension dissipated, he can now focus on having a happy family life.
That's not to say that cheating is good, but in that example there's no good answer. He's still a cheater, but he's a cheater who cheats in order to keep his life, and the lives of his family members, in order. His cheating supports not only his own happiness, but also the happiness of his wife and children with whom he is able to maintain his relationship because he cheated. He's a dirty cheater, but also a loving father and husband because he cheated.
Fidelity is a many-layered thing. There's the question of sexual fidelity, which seems obvious, but there's also emotional, relationship, parenting, and economic fidelity. The calculus on what is the most important type of fidelity and what can be compromised isn't something that can be done from people on the outside looking in.
