Why (in the US) is prostitution illegal but the creation of pornography legal?

Prostitution is not illegal everywhere in the US. Several counties in Nevada permit legal Prostitution.

Pornography is a different story. It's covered by the First Amendment's ban on the government restricting freedom of speech.

Richard

One is creating a product protected under the 1st Amendment, and the other is regulation of commerce, generally for public health reasons (we can discount the moral and religious reasons as government does not have a legitimate interest in those).

I recommend a book I am reading currently, called "Paying for Intimacy" for a sociological review of the legal issues surrounding different relationships between people.

You can find it on Amazon.

If you are really interested, and not just looking for a reason to hire a whore legally (we get this question a lot here :) , I think you will find it extremely enlightening. Highly recommended.

My opinion is that with pornography its regulated (well mostly), and their profits are taxed...with prostitution, it would be very hard to regulate it, and there is no way to know if they are going to pay any tax ( most likely not)...get what I'm saying? If our government could profit they would. Unfortunately that is the country we live in, look at smoking and alcohol...both no better then Marijuana but they have no problem selling both and Taxing the hell out of them.... With pot they would have to outsource it from other countries and not profit as much Its all about the money.

that's just my opinion.

Pornography is protected by the first amendment. Prostitution is not.

It depends on the state. It's illegal to create pornography in Ohio.

I have wondered that same thing