Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Values in community, was sexuality

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Let me clarify the points that I was trying to make 1: your beliefs and
values are yours and others may not share them, even if it is a stated
community value, 2. if a large majority of a group holds a value, those that
do not will sometimes not say anything about it so you will not ever know
for sure what is going on and 3., Sometimes you simply have to accept people
for how they are because you realise that YOU, standing on your soapbox and
criticizing them, will not magically change them into how you want them to
be.  

I would hope that within a community of people, shunning and other forms of
disaproval would not be used on those folks whose values might not match
that of the stated community, or even the unstated but community majority. I
would hope that tolerance and wisdom would apply. Having intervened as a
consultant on  a few occaisions in situations like this, I can say sadly,
sometimes communities operate sometimes no better than the rest of society,
and those who are different are driven out. 

Communities, especially cohousing, tends to be pretty liberal. Perhaps the
real test of tolerance is not living with a socially acceptable gay couple,
but living with a socially unaccepatable anti-gay religious person. 

If this makes you see red and you want to get on your soapbox and yell at
me, feel free to do so privately at floriferous [at] msn.com



Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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