Why Is Porn Legal, but Not Prostitution? (Hi, Montana Fishburne!)

Readers want to know why actors aren't arrested for having sex on camera

By Leslie Gornstein Aug 20, 2010 12:54 AMTags
E! Placeholder Image

If having sex for money is illegal, why isn't having sex on camera for money? If it is, then why hasn't Montana Fishburne been arrested?
—Roisin S.G., via Facebook

You make it sound as if there weren't thousands of Linda Lovelaces and Sasha Grays who had sex on camera for money way before Fishburne ever spurred that ongoing public one-way feud with her famous dad.

If filming porn were illegal, that'd be a whole lot of people in jail. As for why precisely the leopard booty remains at large:

Here's Peter Garrell, a partner at the law firm Liner Grode.

As the law sees it, "a prostitute gets paid for sex," Garrell explains, "But a porn star has sex for free and exercises her First Amendment right to express herself. But she charges for it to be filmed."

In other words, to count as prostitution, the payment must be made for sexual gratification, not for acting—even if that acting brings sexual gratification to thousands of onlookers.

You can find a much more detailed analysis—detailed, if not arousing—here.

Hot, right?

PHOTOS: Jesse  James' Classy Ladies