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Legalize Prostitution
Walter Block
4 minutes

If two unmarried consenting adults have sexual

relations with each other, in all states but one
(Mississippi) they violate no law. Such an act
might be considered immoral by some, but that
doesn’t mean that it should be a criminal offense.
With legalization, rights violations now become
the exception, not the rule.
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If the man pays the woman for sex with dinners,
a movie, flowers, etc. again there is no crime
involved, at least not in civilized countries.
However, if he compensates her for her services
in the form of a monetary payment, this is called

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prostitution and is illegal in most jurisdictions.
This is more than passing curious. Why should
the form of payment play such an important, nay
overwhelming, role? Money is purchasing power,
more efficient than bartering goods and services,
unless the recipient is going to purchase that
exact combination of items in any case. For
instance, for the price of a movie, dinner and
flowers, the woman might prefer a pair of shoes.
She could obtain the footwear, but only if she
were paid in the form of money.
But the weirdness does not end there. If money
changes hands, it converts an act that would be
licit into a crime. The amazing thing is that the act
in the two cases is identical. The only difference
is the transfer of money.
The weirdness now escalates to unimaginable
heights. Or depths of irrationality. If during this
sex act, one for which money duly changes
hands, but a camera is employed, then,
suddenly, and amazingly, this occurrence then,
once again, becomes legal. Well, not exactly
legal. Pornography remains illegal, but, as a

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practical matter, is no longer enforced. Why, you
might ask? Please sit down, now, lest you keel
over when I answer this question. The response
is that this sex act then becomes not one of evil
intolerable prostitution, an awful illegal
occurrence, but one of pornography, an act of
free speech protected by law, or, at least, not
enforced by law.
Are we living in an insane asylum? Sex and
nothing but sex? Legal. Sex paid for with movies,
dinners, flowers? Again non criminal. The very
same act accompanied by monetary payment? A
vicious act, prohibited by law, with severe
penalties for violators. The same act, once again,
money again is transferred from one party to the
other, but a camera is utilized to record the
goings on? We once again return to the
realm not of the legal but of the non-enforced
illegal. Preposterous is not too extreme a
characterization of this concatenation.
When prostitution is prohibited by law, it does not
disappear. It is not for nothing that it is
considered the oldest profession. Rather it is
driven underground. The women involved (there

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are a few male gigolos) are molested and
brutalized. When it is legal, as it is in most of
Nevada, this changes dramatically. Now, in terms
of treatment it becomes similar to other job
pursuits.
With legalization, rights violations now become
the exception, not the rule. Have we learned
nothing from alcohol prohibition? Under this
system, people died from bathtub gin, violence,
shootings over turf. Nowadays, under
legalization, you go to the supermarket for booze.
Let us employ the lessons we should have
learned from this episode concerning alcohol to
sex between consenting adults.
Legalize prostitution!

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