Marriage Equality

While New Hampshire’s Democratic Governor John Lynch survived his reelection race despite a barrage of attack ads from anti-equality groups like the National Organization for Marriage, Republicans won veto-proof majorities in both the State House and Senate. As a result, Religious Right groups such as the Family Research Council have committed to do “whatever it takes” to repeal New Hampshire’s law legalizing gay marriage, which passed in 2009 and went into effect last year. In 2009, Religious Right groups succeeded in overturning a Maine law legalizing gay marriage that was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor by flooding the state with anti-gay activists and misleading ads, and now they have set their sights on New Hampshire. While the Republican majorities in both chambers have the votes to pass a repeal bill, it will require 2/3 majorities to override the governor’s veto. The Concord Monitor reports on how organizations are gearing-up for a major battle over the future of marriage equality in the Granite State:

The lead organizations in the fight are likely to be Cornerstone Action and New Hampshire Freedom to Marry. Cornerstone is affiliated with a national organization - CitizenLink (formerly Focus on the Family) - which could support state efforts. But both sides are also attracting attention from other groups.

On the side of repealing gay marriage, the National Organization for Marriage spent nearly $1.5 million on campaign ads against Lynch. The day after the November election, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown said in a press release that the organization is "poised to start taking back territory where (gay marriage) was wrongly enacted in places like New Hampshire and Iowa. That will be the next battleground, and we are confident of victory."

Brown said last week that the organization will continue to work closely with Cornerstone "to make sure that the wrong of forcing same-sex marriage on New Hampshire is corrected."

The Family Research Council also has a presence in New Hampshire, which it plans to continue. It contributed the legal maximum donation of $5,000 to Cornerstone's PAC during the elections. Tom McClusky, senior vice president of the group's policy wing, said the group has invested in making New Hampshire's Legislature more friendly to traditional marriage. "We don't want to see that go to waste," McClusky said.

…

How much money and effort will be poured into the New Hampshire campaign depends on what type of bill is ultimately proposed. In Maine, which held a statewide referendum that ultimately vetoed the state's gay marriage bill, local and national activists spent more than $6 million to sway public opinion.

The anti gay marriage group there, Stand for Marriage Maine, was led by a local pastor, Bob Emrich, and representatives from the Catholic Diocese in Maine and the National Organization for Marriage. It spent between $2 million and $3 million. The group hired the same public relations firm that worked on a California referendum and got help from the Family Research Council and Family Watch International. Emrich said the National Organization for Marriage was the largest financial contributor, donating around $1.5 million that helped with TV and radio ads, staff, mailings and public relations. The Family Research Council organized rallies and helped with communications and training activists.

…

For now, there are at least two proposed repeal bills in the Legislature and one constitutional amendment. Only the constitutional amendment has the potential to go on a statewide ballot, but not until 2012. Rep. David Bates, a Windham Republican who proposed two of the bills, said he anticipates moving forward with a repeal bill this session but perhaps not pursuing the constitutional amendment until 2012. A constitutional amendment would require a majority vote of 60 percent in the House and Senate, and a two-thirds' majority of the state's voters. The governor would not have a role.

Bates said it may not make sense to go ahead with a constitutional amendment this year, when it would not appear until 2012, and the goal of repealing gay marriage could be accomplished sooner by a law change. "This legislation is intended to restore the marriage law, to put it back where we were four years ago," Bates said.

• I just wanted to point it that it has now been one year since Lisa Miller kidnapped her daughter and disappeared.
• NOM seems quite pleased that most of the candidates for RNC chair oppose marriage equality.
• Orson Scott Card says Mormon's will never forgive Mike Huckabee's "viciously anti-Mormon mockery of Mitt Romney during the 2008 campaign."
• Gov. Mitch Daniels stands by his call for a "truce" in the culture wars.
• Apparently, the fact that a Florida man was allegedly mocked for his faith is a sign of the End Times.
• The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission's list of the "Top Ten Anti-Christian Events in 2010" seems to consist of only four things.

Tom Minnery, Vice President of Government and Public Policy at CitizenLink (formerly Focus on the Family Action), is insisting that House Republicans investigate the Justice Department over their handling of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, in order to fulfill the desires of the GOP’s Religious Right supporters.

Earlier this year, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders brought two separate cases to a federal judge in Boston contesting DOMA’s constitutionality. The Justice Department defended DOMA and argued that the law is constitutional, but the Judge ruled otherwise and found that the law was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause and the Tenth Amendment.

Infuriated by the judge’s ruling, Religious Right activists were so assured of DOMA’s constitutionality that they maintained that the Justice Department must have intentionally mishandled the cases and purposefully lost. Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council said that “in part, this decision results from the deliberately weak legal defense of DOMA that was mounted on behalf of the government by the Obama administration,” and Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel and David Barton of WallBuilders recently discussed why they believe the Justice Department “threw the case.”

Today, Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery called for social conservatives to be more demanding of congressional Republicans than they were when Republicans previously had control of Congress:

On Nov. 2, 2010, the Republicans again won control of the House, by an even larger margin than they did in 1994. It was once again a severe rebuke of the policies of the Democratic Party. We hope it won’t again cause a severe misreading of results by conservative Christians. What we learned in 1994 was that simply having power isn’t enough. What matters is what is done with that power.

Minnery goes on to say that the Religious Right should push the House Committee On Oversight and Government Reform, to be led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), to investigate the Justice Department’s management of the DOMA case to show that the GOP is serious about opposing marriage equality:

Will there be comprehensive hearings by House oversight committees on the unwillingness of the Justice Department to thoroughly defend, as the Constitution requires, legal challenges to federal laws? I have in mind the Defense of Marriage Act. The Justice Department has failed to provide an adequate defense against lawsuits seeking to tear away this law.

He also resuscitated the false claim that the government is using taxpayer funds to subsidize abortion, asking, “Will they try hard to undo health care reform, aiming specifically at its vast expansion of government-paid abortions?”

While Issa has already said that his committee may launch inquiries into everything from climate change science to consumer protection efforts to the Justice Department’s handling of the “New Black Panther Party” case, Minnery and other Religious Right activists will work to pressure Issa to include the DOMA cases among his growing lists of investigations.

Georgetown University’s College Republicans and College Democrats hosted “A Catholic Family Conversation” on LGBT issues last night. The event at the Jesuit school was moderated by columnist E.J. Dionne and featured a debate between author/blogger Andrew Sullivan and Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage.

At the outset, Gallagher asked for a show of hands on where members of the audience stood on gay marriage. There appeared to be more supporters than opponents (not surprising given the mostly young audience and data on widespread Catholic support for LGBT equality). That may be why Gallagher condescendingly told young Catholics who support gay marriage not to pat themselves on the back for bravery, because, she said, what takes courage these days is to defend the church’s teaching. Gallagher and others were wearing a NOM button that tries, clumsily and not very successfully IMHO, to co-opt the term “marriage equality”:

Dionne spoke about his own journey from opposition to support for marriage equality. “Be not afraid,” he said, quoting from the day’s Gospel reading to suggest that Catholics should not fear conversation or engagement with modernity. He said that the Catholic Church has sometimes challenged modernity and sometimes been enriched by it, and sometimes both.

Many of Gallagher’s arguments were familiar to those who follow the marriage issue: Gallagher insisted that marriage is primarily about procreation and that “traditional” marriage serves a societal benefit of ensuring that children are raised by their mothers and fathers. She asked how society would be able to channel young men’s sexual energies into marriage if the traditional ideal of marriage is redefined as bigotry.

Gallagher said she was “shocked” at how opponents of gay marriage are being stigmatized as akin to racists and claimed that the gay rights movement is going to create intensifying conflict between the government and faith communities. (Perhaps she was thinking about NOM board member Orson Scott Card’s call for the overthrow of the government and Constitution if that Constitution is interpreted to permit gay couples to marry.)

In response to one audience question about what she would say to a teen in despair, she said she would counsel that God loves him, and claimed that she would confront his bullies because she has no respect or tolerance for bullying. When a later questioner asked how that statement could be reconciled with some of the groups NOM works with, she essentially dismissed the question by saying she couldn’t respond without specific examples. (We’d be happy to provide a few, or a ton.)

Gallagher slammed Catholics for Equality, which helped organize the event, calling on the group to repent for language she thought too critical of the church. (She seems sensitive in that regard, saying during the debate that Sullivan’s blunt criticism of the pope’s denigrating language about gay people made her want to cry.) And although she criticized her opponents for being uncivil, NOM distributed a flyer to attendees attacking Catholics for Equality. (The flyer slammed People For the American Way as an “anti-religious group funded by George Soros.”)

Sullivan was particularly effective as a speaker because he combined hard-hitting debate about the logic of NOM’s positions and the consequences of the church’s anti-gay teachings with a very personal, moving and disarming honesty about his own life and the way it has been strengthened by his marriage and his husband’s love.

Sullivan said he agreed with much of what Gallagher said about heterosexual marriage as an amazing, beautiful, mysterious event, but that he does not accept that marriage is an “either/or” proposition, adding that neither his parents’ marriage nor his sister’s is invalidated by his own. Sullivan told Gallagher that of course it hurt that she was trying to forcibly divorce him from his husband. It was, he said, a dehumanizing effort to deny gay people human happiness.

For more on the event, see journalist Sarah Posner’s report here.

Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our sixth candidate profile is on Lou Barletta, America’s anti-immigrant mayor:

Those disappointed to see anti-immigrant zealot Tom Tancredo off the national political stage will find a similar one-issue firebrand in Pennsylvania congressman-elect Lou Barletta.

Barletta rose to national prominence as the mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a small working class city that in 2006 enacted some of the most draconian anti-immigrant measures in the country. Hazleton’s law put tough penalties on individuals and businesses who knowingly or unknowingly did business with undocumented immigrants—it revoked for five years the business license of any business caught employing an undocumented immigrant, and slapped landlords renting to undocumented immigrants with a $1,000-a-day fine. The law also declared English the official language of Hazleton, and prohibited city officials from translating documents without permission.

When the law passed, Barletta told the Washington Post, “I will get rid of the illegal people. It's this simple: They must leave." On the day the city passed the measure, Barletta wore a bulletproof vest to illustrate his concern over crimes he said were being committed by undocumented immigrants. Statistics, however, showed that undocumented immigrants were hardly responsible for a crime wave in Hazelton: the city’s data showed that of 8,575 felonies committed in the city between 2000 and 2007, 20 had been linked to undocumented immigrants. Later, forced to admit that he had no proof of an illegal immigrant-caused crime wave, or proof that illegal immigrants were crowding Hazleton’s schools and hospitals, or even any idea how many illegal immigrants were in Hazelton, Barletta responded, “The people in my city don’t need numbers.”

After the law took effect, businesses catering to Latino residents that had revitalized Hazleton’s downtown area saw a sharp drop in business, and Latino residents reported increased hostility from white residents.

A federal judge struck down Barletta’s law in 2007, writing, "The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community." An appeals court this year upheld the ruling.

Although Barletta claimed to be defending “the legal taxpayer of any race,” he admitted that he found inspiration for the law from the website of self-described “proud nationalist” Jim Turner, who pushed a similar measure in San Bernardino, California to prevent the state from becoming, as he put it, a “Third World Cesspool.”

As copy-cat laws started to pop up in towns around the country, Barletta became a hero to anti-immigrant and nativist groups. When he ran for Congress in 2008, Barletta’s campaign received $10,920 from the Minuteman PAC, the political spending arm of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a vigilante border-patrol group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “nativist extremist.” It was the largest donation the Minuteman PAC made to a candidate that year.

In 2009, Barletta drew fire for speaking at a conference hosted by The American Cause, a group that had earlier that year released a report urging the Republican Party to not “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” and instead to put anti-immigrant policies at the forefront of the party’s strategy. The report was authored by several anti-immigrant advocates, many who had clear records of dabbling in white supremacy. The executive director of the group, and main author of the report, had even been charged with a hate crime against an African American woman. The immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice described the 2009 conference as “a forum for white nationalists to forge ties with ‘mainstream’ media commentators and conservative leaders.”

Although Barletta frames most of his politics through the lens of illegal immigration, he has also embraced Tea Party talking points on social issues, the environment, and the scope of government. In a candidates’ debate, he said his first action as a member of Congress would be to vote to repeal health care reform. He says the Affordable Care Act brought about “nationalized health care” and said it would put “life-affecting health decisions in the hands of bureaucrats,” and echoed the false claim raised by many in the Tea Party that health care reform “will take $500 billion out of Medicare." He told a forum in Pocono, "We're afraid of our government. We're afraid of what our government is going to do” and claimed on his campaign website that President Obama and Democrats in Congress are “spending our country into servitude.”

In terms of government spending, Barletta took particular issue with the comparatively miniscule $1.1 million that was spent to send members of Congress and their staffers to last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen. He claims to be a climate change skeptic, saying, “You know there's arguments on both sides. I'm not convinced that there's scientific evidence that proves that. I believe there's some that can also argue the opposite.”

When Obama created a panel to distribute recovery funds from BP’s $20 billion escrow account after the Gulf oil spill, Barletta said, “It’s exactly what the people of the Gulf don’t need – more bureaucracy.”

Barletta’s record as mayor of Hazleton doesn’t speak well, however, for his future as a fiscal problem solver: his budget for Hazleton last year hikes taxes and fees, and called for laying off government workers—including a number of police officers. As Barletta leaves office, Hazleton has the highest rate of unemployment in Pennsylvania. Despite raising taxes as Mayor of Hazleton, Barletta has signed Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge to never raise taxes in Washington.

Barletta opposes marriage equality, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, and abortion rights. He has also embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about government-run “death panels” and the imminent risk of human cloning, stating on his website, “I will oppose the efforts of some to increase or expand the protection or establishment of legal euthanasia, abortion, and human cloning. As Congress begins to tackle the issues of Medicare and health care reform, I will never support a program that results in rationing of life-saving procedures to those covered under those programs.”

In his predictably hostile response to the planned Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, he advanced the popular right-wing pseudo-historical theory of Muslim “victory mosques.”

While Barletta, it seems, will be a reliable vote for the Republican Party’s far-right wing, he’s already emerging as a leader on anti-immigrant zealotry. Two days after the election, he went on Fox News to accuse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of attempting to buy Hispanic votes by introducing the DREAM Act. Watch:
 

Following Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our third candidate profile is Mississippi state senator and self-described “crusader” Alan Nunnelee.

Mississippi Democrat Travis Childers was a prime target for the GOP the moment he took office after a special election in May, 2008 in a seat that Republicans had held for 14 years. One of the most conservative Democrats in the House, Childers opposed health care reform and abortion rights, supported gun rights, and voted with his party less often than almost any other House member.

But despite his conservative bona fides, Childers couldn’t hold onto his seat against the challenge of far-right State Senator Alan Nunnelee. Nunnelee describes himself as on a “crusade to save America.” Although Childers voted against almost all of the Democrats’ major pieces of legislation, Nunnelee criticized him for not being conservative enough. In a speech before his primary victory, Nunnelee declared that Democratic policies are “more dangerous” than Pearl Harbor or 9/11: “What I see in Washington over the last 16 months is a more dangerous attack because it’s an attack on our freedom that’s coming from the inside.”

In an interview with a local Tea Party group, Nunnelee questioned whether the Obama Administration has a national security policy, saying “the administration has been so preoccupied with their domestic agenda that they have ignored our national defense.”

In a speech before the Byhalia Chamber of Commerce in August, Nunnelee dipped his toes in conspiracy theory, announcing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was planning to investigate American citizens who oppose the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”: “Just yesterday, the Speaker of the House said that those people that were opposed to building a mosque at the site of Ground Zero need to be investigated. So if you had a conversation at work, if you picked up your cell phone and called your brother in law, if you sent an email to your children, and you expressed concern about that, you need to watch out, because the Speaker of the House thinks you should be investigated.”

A state senator since 1994, Nunnelee has been a leader in far-right initiatives including hard-line anti-choice laws, opposition to gay rights, reducing environmental oversight, and making it more difficult to obtain Medicaid.

Nunnelee was at the forefront of Mississippi’s efforts to all but eliminate abortion services in the state. He was instrumental in the effort to pass Mississippi’s ban on late term abortion and led the effort to create a law directly challenging Roe v. Wade, which he called “the worst kind of law.” Nunnelee’s law set up tough parental consent requirements and provided that, in the event that Roe v. Wade was overturned, doctors performing abortions could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Nunnelee also wrote an “informed consent” law requiring women to look at a picture book of fetal development before agreeing to an abortion procedure. He worked with anti-choice groups to write a law requiring abortion clinics in Mississippi to meet “ambulatory surgical facility” standards, intended to put abortion clinics out of business by requiring them to follow onerous and precise standards including having hallways over six feet wide and “an attractive setting.” This year, Nunnelee sponsored a bill requiring Mississippi to “opt-out” of using federal health care funds for abortion—although the state already has such a ban and the federal health care bill involves no such funding. He called it the “"Federal Abortion-Mandate Opt-Out Act."

There is now only one abortion clinic in Mississippi.

On the issue of marriage, Nunnelee brags of having pushed Mississippi’s anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment, and of working to prevent gay couples in the state from adopting children, saying: “I am proud to have pushed the statutory language prohibiting same sex couples from adopting as well as the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting same sex marriage in Mississippi.” He also voted to allow an option for covenant marriage, a marriage agreement under which it is very difficult to get a divorce.

Moreover, Nunnelee was behind the successful push to make the DMV print “Choose Life” license plates, with the proceeds going to benefit anti-choice groups, and also boasts that he “led the efforts to place our national motto, In God we Trust, on the classroom wall of every school classroom in the state.”

Nunnelee also boasts of his roll in a 2004 plan that cut 65,000 Mississippians from the state’s Medicaid rolls. His suggestion for those who lost coverage was to call drug companies to find out about free or reduced price prescriptions. The Mississippi Human Services Coalition  gave him a 0 percent ranking for his abysmal voting record.

He has consistently voted for Voter ID laws, which often work to prevent low-income people from voting. He has said he supports Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrant law, saying, “unless the federal government is willing to enforce existing laws, states must protect themselves as Arizona has.” In a GOP candidates’ debate, he stated, “I would be absolutely opposed to granting any kind of amnesty to any man or woman who is in this country illegally,” and also supports ending the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

Finally, after he was elected, Nunnelee went on the radio with notorious bigot Bryan Fischer to discuss the GOP’s policies in the new Congress, repeatedly agreeing that health care reform should be repealed at all costs, even if it takes a government shut-down:

Outside anti-gay organizations like the American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defense Fund, Faith & Freedom Coalition and National Organization for Marriage spent more than $1 million targeting three Iowa Supreme Court justices for defeat over the court's ruling in favor of marriage equality ... and I can't say that I am surprised that the effort paid off:

Three Iowa Supreme Court justices lost their seats Tuesday in a historic upset fueled by their 2009 decision that allowed same-sex couples to marry.

Vote totals from 96% of Iowa's 1,774 precincts showed Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit with less than the simple majority needed to stay on the bench.

Their removal marked the first time an Iowa Supreme Court justice has not been retained since 1962, when the merit selection and retention system for judges was adopted.

So, of course, the professional anti-gay activists are busy congratulating themselves for having carried out God's will:

[F]ollowing Tuesday night's election, Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC), informed OneNewsNow those judges will soon be out of a job.

"So we're praising God; we're thanking all the Iowans who stood up to judicial tyranny," he shares. "It's great news in Iowa, and it's great news for the country that judges don't have to lord it over us. 'We the people' are the ultimate authority."

The pro-family advocate adds that one of the most heartening aspects of the campaign was the fact that hundreds of pastors across the state spoke out about the issue.

"God is our ultimate authority, and we think that we did God's will by standing up to the three judges who would try to redefine God's institution and say that marriage is anything other than one man and one woman," Hurley explains.

The Religious Right groups that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Iowa in an effort to remove three state Supreme Court justices because of the Court's ruling in favor of marriage equality are trying to claim that the effort isn't so much about homosexuality as it is about "judicial activism." 

But, of course, that's not true because everything they do is about homosexuality and the desire to use state power to eliminate it:

On a blustery basketball court at Southside Park, leaders in the push to oust three justices for their role in a decision that legalized gay marriage in Iowa — led by the Washington, D.C., based Family Research Council and the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage – departed a touring “Judge Bus” emblazoned with “vote no” slogans and spoke to a crowd of about 15 people.

Gay marriage is tearing society asunder, and the decision to allow it runs afoul of the Constitution, said Chuck Hurley, president of the highly influential Christian organization Iowa Family Policy Center, which is a local affiliate of the Family Research Council.

“It’s a degradation of God’s best design for the family,” said Hurley, who was on the tour representing the center’s political action arm.

Hurley said gay activity degrades and alters the family structure, concluding that the debate is about stable homes.

“An intact father-and- mother marriage is by far more important than a good education, by far more important than their physical health in the well-being of a child,” Hurley said.

Hurley goes further than opposition to gay marriage, though.

“For millennia every sane culture has had restraints on behavior,” Hurley said.

Stable societies have always had restraints on incest and pedophilia, he said, and that should extend to homosexual acts as well.

“Every culture should have safe and sane laws regarding sexuality,” Hurley said.

Following in the wake of Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling in the Prop 8 case, Chuck Colson declared that the Religious Right must prevent the Supreme Court from ever ruling in favor of gay marriage by building a groundswell of opposition in order to convince the Court that any ruling recognizing the right to marriage equality will not be accepted by the people.

Today, the National Organization for Marriage's Brian Brown was on "Wallbuilders Live" with David Barton and Rick Green and explained that the effort to unseat three judges in Iowa was part of an effort to send just that sort of signal to the Supreme Court:

Barton: I guarantee you, if these judges can be thrown off in Iowa, you watch as state after state after state as people start going and saying "time for accountability, time to get our government back." I'm loving it, it's going to be fun.

Green: It's great, this is really opening the flood gate in a very positive way.

Brown: Many people that have commented on what we're going through right now, especially with the Proposition 8 case in California, are looking at the Iowa judicial retention election - and even though there are many important elections about the country - they're actually saying this is the most important election because it will send a clear signal to the Supreme Court and other judges that they don't have the right to make up the law out of thin air. Their job is to interpret the law, it is not to be out robed masters and judicial activists imposing their will on the rest of us.

And so if the people of Iowa do what I think they'll do and stand up and remove these judges, there will be reverberations throughout the country all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

And just in case you were operating under the delusion that the Religious Right would actually accept any Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality, rest assured that they most certainly will not:

Brown: Ultimately if this Perry vs Schwarzenegger case out of California goes to the Supreme Court - and I'm confident that we will win at the Supreme Court - but if we were to lose and if the Supreme Court was to force same-sex marriage on, for example, Texas or Alabama or states that have voted by something like seventy-five percent to support marriage as a union of a man and woman and you have the US Supreme Court throwing out the vote of these states, I think you're going to have a strong movement for a federal marriage amendment. And that would also be a very clear sign to the courts that they are bound by the law and they don't have the right to simply put into law their own personal preferences.

You also have under Article III in the Constitution the idea that Congress could limit the appellate jurisdiction of some of these federal courts, so that's another way in which, that's already in our law, that Congress could limit the ability of the federal courts to force same-sex marriage on the rest of the country, or any other issue on which the court's overstepping its bounds.