passion and idolatry
Does Romans 1 address homosexual behavior?
Romans 1 is too often misinterpreted and weaponized against the queer community, but in reality it has nothing to do with homosexuality, even if on the surface it seems to. This is because we are reading in English with modern eyes.
context
Any time you read the Bible, you can’t just pluck verses out of context. If you want the true meaning, you need to read them in light of the rest of the chapter and book in their historical context. So with that said let’s look at Roman 1-3 in context.
Rom 1:16-17 Paul makes his intro about righteousness and faith in God
Rom 1:18-32 Paul describes the consequences of not being faithful to God. This section is referencing a list of known awful behaviors that both Jews and Gentiles would have seen as obviously unjust.
Rom 2:1 flips the script and and specifically says “you have no excuse, everyone of you who judges because you are no better”
The rest of Rom 2 talks about how Gentiles often do the law well without even having a law but sometimes Jews who have the law don’t do it.
This is all leading up to his main point, illustrated in Rom 3:23 where he says “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”, then poses the solution to the problem of sin in the person and work of Jesus. It might help to think of this this as “both” as in “both Jews and Gentiles have sinned”.
There’s a lot to unpack here but for now what’s important is understanding that Paul’s key message is uniting Jews and Gentiles in a diverse church under the single banner of Christ understanding they are all in need of a savior. All this to say that Rom 1:26-27 is just a very small part of his larger point, and certainly not his main point.
injustice & idolatry
Now that we have an overview of the context, let’s go back to v18 and talk about that word unrighteousness. In English this gives the impression it’s talking about personal piety like not sex before marriage, etc. but in Greek this work is adikia which more accurately translates to injustice or treating someone else poorly or unfairly. The impious don’t get off the hook either because the word before it, asebia, does actually mean impious. But it’s important to understand the distinction.
So in v18-23 Paul is saying that because of their injustice, they suppressed the truth of the goodness of God replacing it with idols and God gave them up to the lusts of their heart. So idolatry is primary here and all the following sins are in that context. As an aside, it’s interesting to note here that when Paul refers to wrath of God (orge theou), as he does in the rest of Romans, he’s using that phrase to describe earthly consequences of sin here and now, not eschatology. Not hell.
back to the torah
Now for verse 26. Women exchanged natural relations for unnatural. On the surface this looks an awful lot like he’s talking about lesbianism, but that would be the only place that was addressed in the entire Bible. In the Torah however there were two other types of unnatural relations for women, namely incest and bestiality in Lev 18 and 20 so that’s what would have come to mind for the Paul’s Jewish audience.
In verse 27 he references men having sex with other men, also likely harkening back to Lev 18 and 20 so we need to understand what this meant in this context. The priestly holiness codes in chapters 17-26 were designed to separate Israel from its surrounding neighbors, many of which engaged in male cult prostitution, as a form of idolatry. This lines up with the idolatry requirement but is that really what was going on in Rome at the time? Maybe but maybe not. This could be referring to the dominant form of same sex relationship at the time which was pederasty or it could be a bit more specific.
what is caesar’s
We don’t know precisely what Paul was referring to but it absolutely was not referring to homosexuality. The reason we know this is simple. Homosexuality is defined as an attraction to the same sex and not to the opposite. Gay men do not switch from being attracted to female to males, yet that’s exactly what’s happening here. Being homosexual is not the result of idolatry or passion, yet that’s what Paul is talking about.
In v27 it says the men gave up, or abandoned relationships with women, this presumes they had them before. This indicates Paul is talking about something more akin to sexual gluttony or insatiability, sort of like a sex addiction. Imagine someone who is straight that has sex with anything that walks simply because they can. It’s about power, lust, idolatry and domination.
One phrase in here that’s also always bothered me until recently is at the end of v27 where it says they received the due penalty for their error. I was wrongly told that this was referring to STDs or something, but there’s no evidence to show that people from the first century had any idea that STDs could be related to homosexual acts, or even that STDs of that kind existed. This is what’s called an eisegesis, or using interpretation that introduces a presupposition. So what does this phrase actually mean? Frankly it’s just not clear.
One theory that I think is compelling comes from Neil Elliot’s book “The Arrogance of Nations”. He suggests that Paul is referring specifically to the Caesars in Rome who at the time were known for their flagrant disregard of justice and sexual morality, but particularly Gaius Caligula. The Jewish historian Josephus speaks at length about how he not only had insatiable lust, but slept with his sisters, had domineering sex with men in his court and was murdered for it just before the letter to the Romans was sent.
Paul’s point is to find the worst of the worst that everyone knows is bad, in the first chapter, as a setup before 2:1 saying, you are no better, you who judge because all have sinned and are in need of a savior, who is Jesus Christ.
Any way you look at it, if you think about it for just a minute, especially with some historical context, this passage is not talking about a monogamous, consensual homosexual relationships. This passage is about unity through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar.