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Hosts Doug Storm and Trish Kerle' explore some of the nuances, complexities and limitations of marriage for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community – the LGBT community - from a decidedly left of center – some might even say, radical - political and cultural perspective. This is not an anti-marriage or anti-marriage equality show. It is, however, our attempt to underscore that marriage may not be an obvious or clear-cut decision for all same-gender couples.

Since the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act (otherwise known as DOMA or Windsor vs. the United States) in June 2013, there have been dozens of victories for the freedom to marry, with many of those rulings on hold pending appeal. As of today, 19 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have legalized marriage for lesbian and gay couples.

In Indiana, same-sex couples were getting legally married for three days in June 2014 (when the ban on marriage was overturned), until the state was granted a stay of that decision. Then, on August 26, 2014, cases from IN and WI were presented to a panel of three federal judges with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s uncertain when a ruling by that panel will be announced, but many legal experts expect the U.S. Supreme Court will settle the issue of marriage equality once and for all in the coming session.

Guests:

Byron Craig holds two degrees from Indiana University – a master’s degree in African American and African Diaspora Studies and a PhD in Communications and Culture. His research explores the intersections of race, gender and class and he is a faculty lecturer with the Kelley School of Business at IU.

Colin Johnson is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of American Studies, History and Human Biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he teaches courses on LGBT studies and the history of gender and sexuality in the United States.

Credits:

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Co-Host: Trish Kerle'

Board Engineer: Jonathan Richardson

Executive Producer: Alycin Bektesh

Do you think Darwin's Origin of Species undermines a belief in the veracity of the creation as told in Genesis? If you think so, what does that say about your worldview? Will your politics be revealed? Does your belief in Yahweh or any other god, or lack of belief in such constructs, really matter in the larger picture of how we live and breathe and survive together?

Host Doug Storm talks with Carl Weinberg, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of history at Indiana University, who is working on a book with the working title Red Dynamite: Creationism and Anti-Communism in Modern America.

 

Host Lisa-Marie Napoli interviews Mike Potts, Teacher, and Taylor Roberts, Student, both at Brown County Jr. High School, to discuss their recent statewide championship in the "We the People" competition.  The guests discuss the details of the "We the People" national educational program and how it enhances young peoples' knowledge of the constitution and develops their civic skills.  The guests give a first-hand account of what the competitive program is about and also what they may expect when they travel to Washington, D.C. in April for the National Finals.

Tonight on Interchange host Doug Storm is joined by Jason Baird Jackson, Director of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures at Indiana University and Eric Sandweiss a professor in the Department of History at Indiana University to try to answer the question "What are museums for?" by examining the ways these institutions work to create and define the culture they are said to represent. The program also looks at the way a museum works by leaving space for personal self-discovery while also undermining common stereotypes and common ideologies. The museum, not just a book on a wall.

Host Alycin Bektesh speaks with Police Chief Mike Diekoff, Forest Gilmore of the Shalom Center and Elaine Guinn of New Hope Family Shelter about options for warm shelter in Bloomington.

This week on Interchange, Saving Place: Passion, Politics and Sustainability in Historic Preservation. Host Trish Kerle' speaks with Bloomington city council member and small business owner, Chris Sturbaum, and Duncan Campbell, historic preservation consultant, retired associate professor of Architecture and director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at Ball State University about current preservation challenges in Bloomington. Also discussed are issues of conservation and sustainability such as "greening" the built environmental ("the greenest home is the one that's already been built").

In this episode of Interchange, host Doug Storm goes in search of No Place, or what Thomas More, the 16th century lawyer and statesman, and originator of the term (if not the literary genre), called Utopia. Providing map and compass (moral and otherwise) are Constance Furey, associate professor in the department of Religious Studies and a scholar of the Renaissance and Reformation Christianity, and Shelby Everett, a junior at Indiana University working towards a degree in Religious Studies who is currently interning with Fair Trade Bloomington.

Interview highlight: Constance Furey on utopian thinking as "educating desire"

"Though it's often talked about as a kind of blueprint, and that's one of the reasons that Plato's Republic is invoked as a precedent also for a seemingly totalitarian vision of society, I think it's actually helpful to imagine utopia more as a way of thinking about how to educate desire….Those desires are not in fact consistent or uniform across cultures, across time, between people, and so there's a sense that what we do is going to be shaped by what it is we think we want and that's where the ideal comes in and I think utopia is one of these ways of saying, and confronting us, 'What do you want? What looks good to you?'…and therefore the implicit question potentially becomes explicit, 'Why does that look good to you?' And that's a way of shaping or influencing desire…"

Works and authors discussed in this podcast:

Thomas More (1478 – 6 July 1535), Utopia

Plato, The Republic

Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1430), The Book of the City of Ladies

Emilia Laneir (1569-1645), Salve Deus Rex Iudæorum(containing "Eve's Apology")

Nathan Schneider, Thank You, Anarchy

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935): "Yellow Wallpaper"; Herland

Indiana University Economics Professor Martin Spechler and Purdue University American Studies Professor Bill Mullen debate the recent boycott of Israeli universities by the American Studies Association. Mullen is one of eight Indiana professors who signed an editorial supporting the boycott. Spechler has publicly stated his opposition to the boycott in a letter to the editor published in the Herald-Times. Spechler and Mullen discuss the use of boycott as a tool, the implications of an academic organization taking a political stand, and what the issue means for academic freedom. WFHB Assistant News Director Joe Crawford moderates the conversation.

Tonight on Interchange host Doug Storm talks with three faculty members of Indiana University who were active in Occupy Bloomington, one of many occupations of public spaces in US cities that appeared as a response to the Occupy Wall Street Movement that originated in New York City in September of 2011.

Ben Robinson, associate professor of Germanic Studies.

Micol Seigel, associate professor in the American Studies and History Departments and co-founder of Decarcerate Monroe County.

Joe Varga, assistant professor of labor studies and an organizer in the all-volunteer chapter of South Central Indiana Jobs with Justice.

We look at out how Occupy began back in September of 2011 and attempted to define some of the issues surrounding Occupy Wall Street, and we’ve looked at how Occupy Bloomington was born. We also examine the Legacy of OWS-what did OWS encourage, what effects, if any, both positive and negative have come out of this popular protest movement.

Photo courtesy of Joe Varga

This week on Interchange, host Alycin Bektesh speaks with Mela Hatchett and Mary Boutain of the Area 10 Agency on Aging about the changing perceptions and stigmas associated with aging.