SFO seems to have international traffic coming in at all hours of the day. As someone alluded to, DLH insisting on an ILS would have meant inconveniencing maybe a dozen other airplanes.
It seems better to have one plane holding somewhere than 12. They were asked to evacuate a visual approach in night VMC. Not an unreasonable request for the holder of an ATP. It’s San Francisco, not Innsbruck.
I’m not faulting the crew, they have to follow the SOP. It’s just a dumb SOP.