Something about the American psyche struggles with sex. Perhaps more than any other country, we range on a vast continuum from prudishness to pornography, alternately staying hyper-focused on sexual activity and denying it even goes on.
It creates issues in society, sometimes big ones in politics. Janet Jakobsen at Barnard College takes note of the intermingling of sex and politics in her book The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics.
She argues against the idea of a religion/sex fixed binary in America; we explore in this interview.