Part Three
D. Bartlett: "Nobody I know, even the most conservative, is saying homosexuals should be executed. I think people who think they take the Bible literally don't take it so literally as to want to execute people."
Stendahl: "If you look at the whole chapter, a lot of things come in for capital punishment that no Southern Baptist would argue that capital punishment is appropriate for. So their reading is a little *selective*." [my emphasis]
Many generally believe that this passage does not refer to all homosexual behavior, but only to a specific form of homosexual prostitution - that performed in a Pagan temple. One source disagrees, and interprets the prohibition as relating to two gay males having sex on a woman's bed. Their word-for-word translation of the original Hebrew is: "And a man who will lie down with a male in beds of a woman, both of them have made an abomination; dying they will die. Their blood is upon them." In modern English, this could be translated as: It is an abomination for two men to have sex on a woman's bed. They are to be executed; it is their own fault."
*******
-Romans 1:24-27,32
"Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another, Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."
The translators are showing their biases again. The Greek phrase para physin is commonly translated into the English word "unnatural". This is an error. Unnatural implies that the act is morally condemned. In Greek, the phrase really means "that which is beyond the ordinary and usual." "Unconventional" would have been a good word to use. In 1 Corinthians 11:14, when Paul refers to long hair on men as unusual and not ordinary, he used the same two words.
The preceding verses are important to consider. Together with verses 26 and 27, the full sequence is:
Verses 21-23: The people had once been Christians. But they had fallen away from the faith. They made images of Pagan gods in the form of men, birds, animals and reptiles for their religious rituals. These were probably held in Pagan temples.
Verse 24: Next, they engaged in heterosexual orgies with each other as part of these pagan fertility rituals.
Verse 25: Next, they worshipped the images that they had made, instead of God, the creator.
Verse 26: Because of these forbidden practices, God intervened in these fertility sex-rituals and changed the people's behavior so that women started to engage in sexual activities with other women.
Verse 27: describes how God had the men also engage in same-sex ritual activities. They (presumably both the men and women) were then punished in some way for their error. (The NIV substitutes "perversion" for "error.")
Verse 28: Again, because they did not acknowledge God, then He "gave them up" to many different unethical activities and attitudes: evil. covetousness, malice, envy, murder, etc.
J. Nelson: "Paul didn't write it as a condemnation of homosexuality, but as a criticism of Greek behavior in temple worship. Greeks often incorporated sexual behavior in temple worship."
Other interpretations include: The complete passage describes how the ex-Christians engaged in orgiastic, presumably heterosexual sexual activities. Later God "gave them over" to something new: homosexual behavior. This implies that throughout their lifetime they had had a heterosexual orientation and had engaged only in heterosexual sex. God influenced them so that they engaged in homosexual sex. This was, for them, an unnatural activity. They were criticized because they were engaged in sexual activity which was unnatural for them. For a person with a heterosexual orientation, homosexual behavior is "shameful," "unnatural," "indecent," and a "perversion." The passage in Romans is not a condemnation of homosexual behavior. Rather, it disapproves of sexual behavior that is against a person's nature (i.e. homosexual behaviors by people whose orientation is heterosexual). Presumably this would condemn heterosexual behavior by gays and lesbians -- activity which is equally against their nature.
Some question whether the word "perversion" in Verse 27, and "such things" in Verse 30 are related to only certain gay and lesbian behavior. e.g.: casual homosexual activities outside of a committed, monogamous two person relationship, or group homosexual practices of any type, or group homosexual practices in a religious setting. This was a common practice among Pagans at the time; e.g. in the temples dedicated to the Goddess Aphrodite)
You could conclude that Paul may well have not been thinking of gays and lesbians in committed relationships when he wrote this passage. He never referred to such couples in his writings, and probably never encountered any during his lifetime. He might simply have been condemning homosexual orgies in Pagan sexual rituals.
Many English translations render the end of Verse 27 as "due penalty of their error." Their basic error was to leave Pauline Christianity, and engage in idolatry. That is the main theme of the argument. From the idolatry flowed sexual orgies, sexual behavior against their nature, wickedness, greed, murder, etc. The intent of the passage is to show how idolatry leads to complete degeneration of behavior: to evil, envy, treachery, spite, gossiping, etc. The reference to what was, for them, unnatural homosexual behavior seems almost incidental, to the story. It was merely one symptom of the results of Pagan idolatry.
In Greek and Roman society of the time, bisexuality was regarded as quite natural; people in some walks of society were expected to engage in bisexual relations. Since most of them were heterosexual, bisexual activity would be against their personal nature. This behavior would be condemned because it is against their nature. One source states
"...God created each of us with a sexual orientation. To attempt to change it is, in effect, telling God that He created us wrong. The creation (us) does not have the right to 're-create' itself."
Some interpret the "men...with other men" clause to be a translation of the original Greek word for "pederasty" which was commonly practiced at the time by adult males with male children (often slaves). Thus Paul might have been criticizing child sexual abuse.
From Paul's era, until today, many people have believed that the only natural, normal sexual activity was between one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation. Thus "unnatural" sex would include: anyone engaging in sex for pure enjoyment; married couples who engaged in intercourse even though one partner was sterile; married couples who had sex even though the woman was not in the fertile part of her cycle, or was past childbearing years.
Perhaps Paul's use of the phrase "para physin" simply meant that the people engaged in same-sex practices that had no procreative function.
Writer Richard Summerbell suggests that this passage may refer to men who are predominantly heterosexual, but who are involved in "dominant/submissive relationships or casual sex with younger men or older teens...Most of the men taking up such relations are married and actively heterosexual at the same time. The male-male relationships are diversions or, when taken up by single men, substitutes for heterosexuality. It became clear to me that surrogate heterosexuality, a type of male- male sex which in our societies is common in prisons but nowhere else (it is sometimes referred to as "prison homosexuality") can become so common in some societies that its practitioners greatly outnumber and also influence the behaviour of those who are actually of a homosexual orientation." Thus, St. Paul may be writing of men involved in dominant/submissive relationships and/or of heterosexuals involved in sex with male youths. Neither has any connection to consensual, committed gay or lesbian relationships.
