Let’s take the conservative interpretation and assume that the referent of ‘they/them/their’ is ‘all homosexuals.’ Is this a good description of the origin of homosexuality, and of the behavior of all homosexuals? Well, first of all, if you hold to this interpretation you must believe that there is one and only one cause of homosexuality, and that is excessive idol worship. Remember, we aren’t talking about the metaphorical stuff here, but literally bowing down to statues. This contradicts what most conservatives say. I commonly hear from people like James Dobson that homosexuality is a result of suffering child abuse at an early age, overexposure to girl’s activities at a sensitive age, not having a strong father presence, or even overexposure to pornography. But if all homosexuality really is a punishment (“God gave them up”) for excessive idol worship, then people like Dobson flatly contradict their own interpretation of Romans 1. Whatever it is that is described in vv.26-27 is a clearly a punishment for too much idol worship. To diagnose someone as being homosexual because of sexual abuse as a child and then to say that Romans 1 is about them is absurd.
Then there is the issue of those nasty character qualities in vv. 28-32 that ‘they’ have as a further result of ‘their’ punishment. Tony Campolo sometimes tells a heart-wrenching story from his childhood of a gay kid named Roger. Roger was identified as gay because of some physical characteristics, and so he was relentlessly teased for his obvious “transgression” of “nature’s law.” One day, 5 boys ganged up on Roger and shoved him down in the shower room, and took turns holding him down and urinating on him. Roger went home that night, waited until his parents went to bed, and then hanged himself in his basement. Try reading through that list of adjectives again in vv.28-32, and then ask yourself who the unrighteous, evil, covetous, malicious, envious, murderous, strife-filled, deceitful, gossiping, slandering, God-hating, insolent, haughty, boastful, evil-inventing, parent-disobeying, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless ones are in that story. Do you think it was Roger, or the boys who urinated on him? Do you honestly believe that this description fits all gay people? If you think the “they/them/their” in Romans 1 is the group of homosexuality, then you are committed to this absurd belief.
On the other hand, if we interpret the ‘they’ referent as the orgy-having, idolatry-loving Corinthians, this passage goes from making no sense to making perfect sense. Those people without a doubt deserved a condemnation, and although I don’t know much about these perverted worship services, I am sure that Paul accurately describes their crime, the punishment for their crime, and the result of the punishment. This condemnation, then, is no more a condemnation of all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual orgies is the same thing as condemning all heterosexuality.
One worry is still remaining. Perhaps you will ask, “Alright, I understand that Paul was primarily addressing those worshippers of Aphrodite. But still, can’t we read vv.26-27 as applying to all homosexuals? I mean, even though Paul’s rant wasn’t primarily about all homosexuals, he still calls all homosexual acts and passions “contrary to nature”? Perhaps it was incidental, but don’t we still get a condemnation of homosexuality in this text?” And that’s a good enough question to be the subject of the next blog.
