If you are saying they won't accept a patch because of this, I'd be tempted to say "for f**ks sake can I be bothered with such pettiness?", but I suppose "for the greater good" I'd resubmit.
It is common behaviour for large scale projects, e.g. the Linux Kernel applies this rule, too. If you frequently work with the history (git blame|log), you can soon see the advantages of it. So, it is really not there to make sending patches harder ;)
Regards,
Wolfram