A CONVERSATION WITH THE PORN RANGERS - PART 1

INTERVIEW BY JON BENJAMIN


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.”


CONTINUED
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