A Conversation With the Porn Rangers

A few months ago, I put my son to bed and headed to the den to look at some pornography on the internet. I put my headphones on and began to watch a hirsute man, probably early 40s, receive oral sex from a thin-lipped woman of commensurate age. The byline in block letters read, “BJ From the Wife.” She thrust her head back and forth rapidly, then shifted tempo to slow and smooth. On the slow parts, she usually brought her hand up and held the base of his dick as she slid her tongue up and down. Her tongue looked taut, not relaxed, which bothered me. After some time, I turned around and there stood my son. It felt like a bear encounter. I carefully shut the screen down until it snapped closed. I watched him watching me as the sounds of “BJ From the Wife” still played into my headphones, then abruptly stopped. I walked him back to bed.

I’m not certain he saw the screen, but I never asked. I continue to feel ambivalent about the moral issues that surround the pornography debate, more content to put it out of my head, and maybe that is a problem. Issues as sticky as this one might require more confrontation and less lassitude. I have always judged harshly those outspoken critics of porn but, on the other hand, having a cause can be a positive force, as long as it doesn’t transmogrify into zealotry. I started reading extensively on the pornography issue and came upon a very interesting pair of antiporn advocates who travel extensively speaking to young people (those most susceptible to porn) and who, in opposition to the traditional fire-and-brimstone methods of preaching against porn, employ a more modern approach to spark the debate. From what I had gathered, their appeal, albeit rooted in evangelical values, was more textured. I guess it could be called postevangelical.

I recently sat down with EJ and Nate, both ordained ministers, who go by the moniker of the Porn Rangers, to hear their side of the story.

Vice: So let’s get to exactly who you guys are so that everybody knows. The Porn Rangers is just the two of you.

EJ:

Absolutely.

Nate:

Just us.

And you are…

EJ:

A two-man army.

And you’re ministers.

EJ

: We are. We’ve been preaching on the road for…

Nate:

It’s been eight years now.

EJ:

I remember it was just when George W. Bush was elected the first time when we hit the road, and we haven’t looked back. We haven’t stopped. We’re just spreading the word of the sin of pornography.

And so you speak to groups of kids all over the country about how pornography can affect…

Nate:

Yes, we go from community to community. College campuses are big for us.

EJ:

Sometimes if we don’t have a group we’ll just talk to one kid. We don’t need a group, I mean of course the more the merrier, but too many and it gets a little hard to spread the message. Usually a group of four or five is perfect, but yeah if it’s just one that’s fine too.

Nate:

Yeah.

So do you have a home base or do you…

EJ:

No, we’re on the road.

So you don’t have a church or a ministry that you preach out of.

Nate:

We have a virtual church.

EJ:

We have a post-office box, and other than that we are around the country in what we call our VC, our virtual church, which is our van.

Nate:

We’re on the move.

I saw the picture of your van. You do have a real van, which has your logo on it and the x’s for pornography, and then x’s over the x’s, which is complicated, ’cause you graphically x out each x.

EJ:

There are six x’s.

Nate:

On the website you see the x’s, then you see the x’s—

kshoom

!—come in and cover them. It’s animated.

You cross out each x with an x?

Nate:

On the side of the van it doesn’t work as well.

EJ:

The website works a lot better than the van.

Right, but that’s what you’re doing, you’re…

Nate:

X-ing out the x.

Explain to me your basic plan to—besides just talking to kids and putting on your show. How do you actively get kids to stop masturbating to porn?

Nate:

It’s a form of aversion therapy with a bunch of bells and whistles… That’s where the van comes in.

EJ:

We drive in, we invite them into the van, and we show them pornography.

Nate:

We show them pornography till it makes them sick.

Wait, wait, you bring kids into your van and show them pornography?

Nate:

Or adults. Whoever needs help.

EJ:

It’s mostly kids.

Nate:

We bring in people who need help.

But you can’t show kids pornography, right? I mean, legally…

EJ:

But they can make pornography legally. We’re trying to get the kids off of pornography.

Technically it is a legal statute that pornography can’t be sold to minors.

Nate:

We don’t sell anything. We own this pornography we’re showing.

EJ:

We do not

want

the children seeing pornography. We want them to watch the pornography and we want them to be so sickened by it that they’ll never do it again.

Nate:

It’s like when I was a kid, I would sneak cigarettes from my mom and she caught me once, and she made me sit at the kitchen table and smoke a pack of cigarettes.

And then what happened?

Nate:

I got so sick… and then I started to really resent my mother.

But how can it be legal to show minors pornography? You guys are adults. You can’t show…

EJ:

We don’t show it to them. It’s already playing. It’s already playing on a TV monitor in the back of the van. We’re not showing it to them, it just happens to be playing in the van.

Nate:

I think you’re getting hung up on legalities and—

How old are these kids?

Nate:

Late teens, 20s, 30s…

But if they’re under 18…

Nate:

Look, we don’t ask too many questions of these people we’re trying to help… We’re not like cops, we’re not like, “Show us your ID.” You know we’re just like, “If you want help, get in the van, and we will show you pornography until you never will want to look at pornography again.”

How long do you show the kids pornography?

Nate:

As long as it takes.

EJ:

Sometimes it takes a long time. What invariably happens is, they’ll watch it, and like Nate says, it’ll take a while; sometimes three or four hours. And then they will—they’re children, they’re human, they’re flawed in that respect—they will react to it and, being impressionable, we ask them if they want to masturbate.

What? In front of you?

EJ:

They’re watching pornography. They’re watching the cancer that is pornography. You show somebody the cancer that is pornography long enough and they will start to masturbate.

Nate:

And what we do is we heighten the therapy. We videotape them masturbating. And then we show the footage to them.

EJ:

And once you’ve seen yourself masturbating, you’re freaked out.

Nate:

It’s very effective therapy.

EJ:

And then we’ll ask them if they want to try again.

Nate:

It’s very hard to masturbate… to yourself masturbating.

Wait, so you bring kids into your van, you show them pornography, and then they masturbate to the pornography, and then you videotape them masturbating to pornography? And then you show it to them?

EJ:

That’s the crucial part.

Nate:

Because then they really realize what they’re doing. And they’re like, “This is horrible.”

That can’t be legal. I’m sorry, but that can’t be legal.

EJ:

We’re not selling, we’re not selling—

Well, what do you do with the tapes?

EJ:

For educational purposes, we do distribute them, but that’s not…

Distribute them where?

EJ:

We distribute them to other…

Nate:

…people that need help.

EJ:

People who have problems with pornography.

You can buy these tapes?

Nate:

Sure.

EJ:

It’s a donation, it’s a donation.

Nate:

We are a nonprofit.

From your website?

Nate:

Yes, we’re a nonprofit organization and we work on donations. I mean the van… We’re on the road 40 weeks a year and with gas prices the van is…

EJ:

Absolutely, the van costs a lot. Eighty percent of the proceeds of these videos that we stream on the internet go to our ministry. And 20 percent, of course, we need to live.

Do these kids know you’re distributing tapes of them masturbating?

Nate:

Let me ask you this, do you think that an R-rated movie is pornography? Like a Hollywood movie, like say a movie about cheerleaders, and there’s naked girls in a shower, is that pornography to you?

No, I don’t think so.

Nate:

Well, to me it is, and I think that’s the difference, ’cause that’s not helping, that’s exploiting—that’s titillating young people. But what we’re doing is we’re turning people off to it so that they can return to their lives. Get out of the wormhole!

EJ:

These tapes we offer them—yes, for a price, a donation to support the cause—people watch them and they get to see somebody else masturbating and they can say, “Oh my God, that could be me.” I mean, I’ve done that. It’s so easy to picture yourself in a van being videotaped masturbating and it’s such a fine line between doing it at home by yourself and taking some sort of twisted pleasure from it and being in a van.

So the van has some significance?

EJ:

Would you want to masturbate in a van?

I don’t know. I never had the opportunity to do that.

EJ:

Would you want to? How would you feel about yourself if you did?

I mean, are you coaxing these kids to do that or do they do that naturally on their own?

EJ:

We encourage them to be themselves. We in no way coax anybody to do anything.

Nate:

Get out of the wormhole.

EJ:

We say come into the van and out of the wormhole.

Nate:

I mean, if I ran a methadone clinic and people were like, “Oh, give me some methadone,” I wouldn’t be like, “Oh, are you really a heroin addict? ’Cause you might just wanna try methadone.”

The fact that you say it’s for educational purposes means nothing. It’s just words. And it’s illegal!

Nate:

Oh, so Jesus should have gotten a license before he went around the countryside—

If you bring kids into a van and tape them masturbating to pornography and then sell the tapes, that’s making pornography!

Nate:

All right, all right. Let me just be clear—what you’re saying is that we shouldn’t have these tapes available for healing and donations so we can continue our ministry, because you would be turned on by them!

What if I do buy your tape and jerk off to a teenager…

Nate:

I don’t think you’d be able to.

EJ:

What if you’re turned on by watching Hitler speak? What if you’re turned on by watching an orangutan rip apart another orangutan? That’s your problem. What if you’re turned on by watching a white wall? Listen, all we’re doing is putting something out there that is disgusting and letting other people view it as they will.

Nate:

The Bible has stories of how Jesus consorted with harlots and moneylenders. Do you think people read the Bible and say, like, “Oh, I’m gonna be a harlot and a moneylender.” Your argument frankly doesn’t make any sense.

EJ:

We run into this all the time. It’s so frustrating.

Nate:

If you were there when these kids and adults—men, women, every race, every creed, every religion—got out of the van, if you saw the looks of their faces, you would get it. You’d be like, “Well, those people clearly won’t be doing this again.”

What were you two doing before the Porn Rangers?

EJ:

We were the Goofballs.

The Goofballs?

Nate:

We were the Goofballs. We were more like: “Ayyyyyy, we’re the Goofballs!”

That’s what you did?

Nate:

We’d get into town and do like a… [

does a little dance in his chair

] and people would gather around and it’d be like a funny kinda… [

makes weird arm movements

]

What is that? Breakdancing?

EJ:

We were very goofy.

Nate:

Yeah [

weird arm movements again

].

EJ:

See, you know what I think is frustrating too is that this conversation has gotten so serious and it’s hard when people don’t appreciate what we do. We’re really just goofballs…

And what did the Goofballs do?

Nate:

The same thing. We spread the word of the evils of masturbating to kids in a fun-loving way.

Do you think that—just because of the fact that you’re pastors or ministers—you’re taking advantage of people through what you do?

Nate:

Our whole thing at first was like, “What do we wish people would say to us?” And it was, “It can be fun to stop masturbating.”

EJ:

Seventeen percent of the kids who have entered our van and 21 percent of the adults have never masturbated to pornography again. If you want to call that exploitation, call it exploitation. But I want to call it a success story—a great American success story.