NEWSLETTER

INTERVIEW BY JON BENJAMIN


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.


A CONVERSATION WITH THE PORN RANGERS 1 | 2 |