Are homosexual acts sin? I honestly don’t know. After meeting so many amazing people, followers of Christ and not, who are attracted to the same gender, I feel the weight of what saying yes or no means to that question. If the answer is yes, then there are a lot of folks out there who have a much greater burden to bear in a lot of ways than I do. I have a wife, who I love and have never had to question if that was right or wrong. I have never had to question my attraction to her. I have never had to wonder if I could be a member of a church if we got married. I have never had to wonder if moral law demanded that I either stay single for my entire life or force myself into a loving relationship with someone I am not attracted to. I never had to question why I was attracted to who I was attracted to, and I have never had to face the fierce scorn of the church for the many sins I have committed because my sins are either too private or too common.

I should say that the church’s response to the homosexual community has been downright nasty and hypocritical. Plenty of brothers and sisters have told me they think the church is being misrepresented here because many people they know are not so condemning. That does not matter here. When some of the church has spewed out such awful venom, the required action from the rest of the church is not silence or indifference. A compassionate response to the homosexual community and a public rebuke against bigotry is required. The church in the west, I believe, has failed in this matter, and done so in a lasting way.

Because of the church’s lack of love in engaging this conversation in public discourse but also in engaging people, I think the church has largely lost its right to inform people what is right or wrong on the subject. It has become an impossible task for me to attempt that debate with anyone I know who is gay. Or if the issue is brought up, all I can offer is a big apology from the church and a compassionate response that focuses on God’s grace and empathy with sinners in contract to the attributes they see in the church.

All that being said, I have recognized my desire for homosexual acts not to be sin because of the seemingly unreasonable burden that places on so many. But scripture does not give us an easy way out here. If I really wanted to, I could make scripture say what I wanted it to say, but I wouldn’t really want it to say what I want it to say, otherwise I would be following myself instead of Jesus. Still, the best I can do is say I don’t know.

However, I do question a line of reasoning here from Walsh. There is not much evidence to suggest Paul is specifically targeting the upper class of the empire in his judgement. The anti-imperialism in Chapter 1 is there, but it is subtle. I think Paul addresses both the governance of Romans and the entire Roman culture as proved not only in the rest of Romans but more pronounced in Colossians. Yes the judgement sounds “suspiciously” like Nero’s court. It also sounds like a holistic judgement against the sin of an entire culture. The licentious feasts and orgies were not limited to the court. In fact, they were so common, that even the underground movement of Christianity in its infancy was accused of such practices along with cannibalism (communion) and witchcraft.

And it doesn’t make sense for Paul to be specifically talking about the aristocracy in one case when he says “they, they, they”, and then bring it home to the everyday people in the church in Chapter 2 when he says “you who practice the very same things”. How is it possible to say Paul is talking about the licentious feasts, orgies, and rape by Nero’s court or the aristocracy on the whole in the one sense, and judge it, and then say to the average church-goer and citizen, “you do the same things”? They only do the same things if they are the same things.

Now if we say it was a common practice of the culture to engage in non-consensual, same-gender sex, we have a case to dismiss (in this case) consensual, same-gender relationships. But if Paul really means what he says, then we have to take him at that. He doesn’t give us any consensual / non-consensual distinction there. He simply compares natural to unnatural. Now it is possible Paul was specifically addressing non-consensual sex. But I don’t think we have enough to convince us of that. And Paul is neither shy nor timid. If he meant rape, why didn’t Paul simply say rape? Paul is neither shy nor timid

Thank you for the thought-provoking message.