Romans 1:21-32 isn’t about Gay people or their committed love. It’s about Christian (v 21) couples in loveless marriages pursuing satisfaction outside their relationship.
Chilled affection between spouses is a recurring Pauline theme.
In 1Corinthians 7:3-4 Paul is compelled to tell Christian spouses not to hold out on one another’s sexual needs. Such an enjoinder is as fascinating as it is ironic, because he allows Christians to marry only as a way of controlling their lusts (verses 1-2)! In Ephesians 5:22, 25 and 28, Paul tells Christian couples to love each other. Spouses, who should have natural affection for each other, clearly didn’t have it in 2Timothy 3:3. It seems heterosexual Christian couples have intimacy problems.
In Romans 1:26 Christian wives forsook relations with their men. Since women were largely homebound when unaccompanied by a man, adulterous affairs regardless of gender were mostly out of the question; the women likely took matters into their own hands…literally.
Having greater mobility the men sought release wherever they could: bathhouses, brothels or temples. They weren’t enflamed in lust toward one another in v27. The verb “ἐξεκαύθησαν” paints a sad picture of the glowing cinders of a dying fire, not flames of passion. Also “εἰς ἀλλήλους” is legitimately rendered “among one another.”
Romans 1 is about today’s married heterosexual Christian preachers, politicians and “family men and women” who’ve lost their love for their spouses, not Gay people and their committed love.
--ez duz it, © 12 July 2011
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