It's a little more subtle than "getting away with sex"
A lot of people in the US proclaim some sort of moral purity and or authority. Others, do not.
This breaks down roughly along party lines, with one party running on moral purity and or authority and the other running on a more general concept of social justice and equality. And that's just for visualizing how it works. There are strong purity factions everywhere.
When the purity people get caught out as unpure the shit hits the fan! When others get caught out, the purity people go nuts, others may or may not have cause to comment, depending on how they evaluate the scenario.
President Bill Clinton is an example of the not running on purity person getting caught in some sex. The purity crowd moved to impeach and we spent a lot of money. In the end, he was not impeached, and the real judgement from the non-purity crowd was he was stupid, got caught, and his wife didn't deserve any of the shit that came of it.
The purity crowd declared him impure, and deserving of the worst.
Wide stance Senator Stevens, "the series of tubes guy" is an example of the purity gone bad. He, along with others, have run on an anti-gay platform, more generally "family values" and got caught soliciting gay sex. Of course the purity crowd went nuts, and so did a lot of the nation on that one.
Reason: Claiming purity while failing to say what one does and doing what one says. Hypocrite was the judgement from the non-purity crowd, and impure, deserving of the worst was the judgement from the purity crowd.
It's important to see that dynamic to understand how bizzare the USA is about sex and related things.
The majority of us are more sensitive to hypocrisy than we are any violations of purity, and the worst is generally to claim high purity, then not actually demonstrate it in how one lives their life.
It's a wonder we got the gay marriage progress we did!
But there is something instructive there. Don't lie about your own moral sensibilities. It's better to be impure and honest than present as pure and not be. Much better.
As more Americans work through this, we see more honesty regarding sex and with that, less overall insanity.
But it's going to be a long while for that to play out more favorably in our society. It may never actually, and that's due to religion. It's not a particular sect or faith. It's just that our First Amendment has the effect of amplifying religion. Given there is no State sanctioned one, religious people see the USA as a free state, ready to be claimed, or saved, or some other thing.
Or, if it's not that, there is just a lot of freedom to get the word out, and so there are a lot of people getting that word out.
The media will play to this because eyeballs mean revenue.
And perhaps that is the last thing I would say. Most Americans aren't so wound up on sex. Enough of us are to present that way in media, because it makes money.