It’s always hard to say what makes certain news stories hold seemingly everlasting public interest. For nearly a month, the sex lives of Sarasota’s most prominent power couple seized headlines and spurred media investigations and revelations.

Maybe we don’t have an O.J. Simpson-style media circus parked outside Christian and Bridget Ziegler’s home. But it’s unclear when interest in the pair’s future will wind down. Why so much attention around this never-ending walk of atonement? Affairs aren’t new to politics, nor is hypocrisy. But the sheer novelty of this shame-fest feeds the appetite for schadenfreude held by an insatiable public.

This story broke with the words “ménage à trois” in a website headline. If we’re honest, that detail was always more sensational than even the accusation of rape that set off a criminal investigation of Christian Ziegler. Sure, powerful men have cheated on their wives before, but the term adultery doesn’t even easily fit here. The admission by all parties that Bridget and Christian Ziegler engaged in a consensual threesome with a Sarasota woman at least once puts this situation in a rare category.

When I googled “famous throuples” and “famous threesomes” (and weeded out fan fic), the only memorable headline I found involved Charlie Sheen, back from his tiger blood days living with two actresses whom I long ago had forgotten the names — though I did learn something I never knew about Tilda Swinton.

But there’s also the sheer duplicity. The Zieglers aren’t famous for business ventures of championing tax cuts, but for strident social conservatism. Just check the famous photo of Bridget Ziegler stridently wearing an anti-transgender T-shirt with the words “Real woman aren’t men.”

Moms For Liberty, a group Ziegler co-founded even if she did little with its afterward, became most famous for pushing books with LGBTQ characters off shelves. The revelation she might be engaging in a same-sex encounter, even just the one time she admitted to with police, was enough to draw fire. At a School Board meeting last week, attacks would be delivered to her face for hours as people asked a woman not accused of any crime to resign.

“Bridget Ziegler does not deserve to lose her job because she may be queer,” said Ida Smith of Women's Voices of Southwest Florida. “She should lose it because she's insincere."

But truthfully, this isn’t just about explicitly bigoted positions held by the Zieglers. Both politicians spent years presenting their suburban life raising three daughters as the great American model, rushing from political gatherings to children’s softball games. Now we learn evening children’s activities were supposed to be preceded by afternoon escapades.

Christian Ziegler has not so subtly hinted in political circles that he should be able to weather a sex scandal is the age of Donald Trump. This is a world where Matt Gaetz, less than two years after accusations of sex trafficking a minor, remains popular in Florida’s most conservative House district.

But numerous Republican operatives tell me he can’t easily play the part of the persecuted. Trump never presented himself as the picture of the perfect conservative family. Gaetz, who remained single throughout his 30s, always seemed as much libertine as libertarian. During his time under media scrutiny, the Congressman actually released statements making clear he got laid in high school and was “not a monk.”

But the Zieglers pretended to be Ward and June Cleaver when they weren’t scheduling trysts with a drunken Kelly Bundy. For that reason, the controversy continued to swirl even as evidence made criminal prosecution less likely.

Jacob Ogles is contributing senior editor for SRQ MEDIA.