I can't comment on the Leviticus passage, not knowing Hebrew. As far as arsenokoitai is concerned, I hope you'll forgive me if I skip over to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, since that provides better information on what Paul might have meant. (Also, as I'm sure you know, Paul's authorship of 1 Timothy is under dispute.)

Here's the passage, for those who don't have it handy:

"Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, malakoi, arsenokoitai, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers - none of these will inherit the kingdom of God."

Malakoi and arsenokoitai are the key words here; I'll say more about them below.

First, though I'm going to quote a bunch of classical passages against homosexuality/pederasty to make a point. A warning that these passages are often highly homophobic. Fortunately, I've spared you reading the pro-homosexuality passages, which are often highly misogynistic. :)

* * *

Were one to follow the guidance of nature [phusis] and adopt the law of the old days before Laius - I mean, to pronounce it wrong that male should have to do carnally with youthful male as with female - and to fetch his evidence from the life of the animals, pointing out that male does not touch male in this way because the action is not natural [physis], his contention [Lacedaemon's contention against pederasty] would surely be a telling one, yet it would be quite at variance with the practice of our societies. . . . You know the question we are repeatedly raising is what enactments [i.e. laws] foster goodness and what do not. Very well, then, suppose our present legislation pronounces this practice [pederasty] laudable, or free from discredit. How will it promote goodness? Will it lead to the growth of the tempor valor in the soul of the seduced? Or the growth of a temperate character in his seducer? That is surely more than any man can believe. Surely, the very opposite is the truth. Everyone must censure the unmanliness of the one party [i.e. the man], who surrenders to his lusts because he is too weak to offer resistance, and reproach the other [i.e. the youth] - the impersonator of the female - with his likeness to his model. . . .

I [know] of a device for establishing this law of restricting procreative intercourse to its natural [phusis] function by abstention from congress with our own sex, with its deliberate murder of the race and its wasting of the seed of life on a stony and rocky soil, where it will never take root and bear its natural fruit, and equal abstention from any female field whence you would desire no harvest.

[Plato, Laws VIII 836b-e, 838e-839a, fourth century BC]

* * *

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women changed the natural use into that contrary to nature [phusis], and in the same way also the men, giving up the natural [phusis] use of the female, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

[Paul, Romans 1:26-27]

* * *

Much graver than the above [having sex with a sterile woman] is another evil, which has ramped its way into the cities, namely pederasty. In former days the very mention of it was a great disgrace, but now it is a matter of boasting not only to the active but to the passive partners, who habituate themselves to endure the disease of effemination, let both body and soul run to waste, and leave no ember of their male sex-nature to ember. . . . These persons are rightly judged worthy of death by those who obey the law, which ordains that the man-woman who debases the sterling coin of nature should perish unavenged, suffered not to live for a day or even an hour, as a disgrace to himself, his house, his native land and the whole human race. And the lover of such may be assured that he is subject to the same penalty. He pursues an unnatural pleasure and does his best to render cities desolate and uninhabited by destroying the means of procreation. Furthermore he sees no harm in becoming a tutor and instructor in the grievous vices of unmanliness and effeminacy by prolonging the bloom of the young and emasculating the flower of their prime, which should rightly be trained to strength and robustness. Finally, like a bad husbandman he lets the deep-soiled and fruitful fields lie sterile, by taking steps to keep them from bearing, while he spends his labour night and day on soil from which no growth at all can be expected.

[The Special Laws, III.37-39, by he Jewish philosopher Philo, writing around the same time as St. Paul, i.e. the first half the first century]

* * *

[Protegenes:] For if male converse [i.e. sex between males], which is altogether against nature, neither extinguishes nor is any way noxious to amorous affection, much more probable it is that the love of women, which is according to nature, should reach to the consummation of friendship . . . But the submission of males to males, whether it be by compulsion and strength, like a violent and forcible rape, or whether it be voluntary, - men suffering themselves weakly and effeminately to be covered by each other, like four-footed beasts, and counterfeiting the act of generation [i.e. procreation] in defiance of nature (as Plato says), - is void of all grace, brutish, and contrary to the end of venereal pleasure. . . .

[Plutarch:] Any sober and considerate person may rather revile the company of male with male, and justly call it intemperance and lasciviousness,

A vile affront to Nature, no effect
Of lovely Venus or of chaste respect.

And therefore, as for those that willingly prostitute their bodies, we looked upon them to be the most wicked and flagitious persons in the world, void of fidelity, neither endued with modesty nor any thing of friendship . . . And as for those who, not being by nature lewd and wicked, were circumvented and forced to prostitute themselves, there are no men whom these always look upon with greater suspicion and more perfect hatred than those that deluded and flattered them into so vile an act, and they bitterly revenge themselves when they find an opportunity. [He goes on to cite several examples of youths killing their older lovers.]

["On Love," in Moralia, by the pagan essayist Plutarch, writing in the second half of the first century]

* * *

[The Creator] devised in each species two types. For she allowed males as their peculiar privilege to ejaculate semen, and made females to be a vessel as it were for the reception of seed, and imbuing both sexes with a common desire, she linked them to each other, ordaining as a sacred law of necessity that each should retain its own nature and that neither should the female grow unnaturally masculine nor the male be unbecomingly soft [malakizesthai]. . . .

"In the beginning therefore, since human life was still full of heroic thought and honoured the virtues that kept men close to gods, it obeyed the laws made by nature [phusis], and men, linking themselves to women according to the proper limits imposed by age, became fathers of sterling children. But gradually the passing years degenerated from such nobility to the lowest depths of hedonism and cut out strange and extraordinary paths to enjoyment. Then luxury, daring all, transgressed the laws of nature herself. And who ever was the first to look at the male as though at a female after using violence like a tyrant or else shameless persuasion? The same sex entered the same bed. Though they saw themselves embracing each other, they were ashamed neither at what they did nor at what they had down to them, and sowing their seed, to quote the proverb, on barren rocks they bought a little pleasure at the cost of great disgrace.

[Affairs of the Heart, by the pagan author Pseudo-Lucian, either second or fourth century]

* * *

To sum up the arguments:

1) Males having sex with males is against nature. (Paul, Plato, Philo, Plutarch, Pseudo-Lucian)

2) Males having sex with males is shameful. (Paul, Plato, Philo, Plutarch, Pseudo-Lucian)

3) Males have sex with males because of lust and a desire for pleasure. (Paul, Plato, Philo, Plutarch, Pseudo-Lucian)

4) Men have sex with youths because they wish to seduce or rape them. (Plato, Plutarch, Pseudo-Lucian)

5) Youths who let men have sex with them act in an effeminate manner. (Plato, Philo, Plutarch, Pseudo-Lucian)

6) The true purpose of sexual intercourse is procreation. (Plato, Philo, Pseudo-Lucian)

7) Having sex with men wastes sperm. (Plato, Philo, Pseudo-Lucian)

8) Having sex with women when you don't intend to impregnate them wastes sperm too. (Plato, Philo)

There's some inconsistency between the arguments - for example, certain folks, such as Paul, don't seem to hold the view that the sole purpose of sex is procreation. But there's a very striking overlap between the arguments, particularly the argument that homosexuality is against nature, which is often paired with the argument that homosexuality is against the divine will.

So let's get back to malakoi and arsenokoitai. You may have noticed that Pseudo-Lucian uses a form of the word malakoi in his passage; by it, he means effeminate. Malakos literally means "soft." It was often used as a word to refer to the passive partner in homosexuality - the "soft" person who played the passive role. It also referred to effeminacy. A soft man, in the eyes of classical folk who disapproved of gender variation in men (which pretty much describes most classical folk), was an effeminate man. The two meanings - passive partner and effeminate - often coincided in the same passage.

The belief system that underlay this double usage was that men must be active partners. The proponents of pederasty had a heck of a hard time explaining why youths should be passive partners when everyone in the classical world agreed that men should always be on top. This gave opponents of homosexuality their most powerful argument: by being passive partners, youths were supposedly feminizing themselves or being forced into a feminine role. Similarly, the active partner in lesbian relationships was said to violate her natural gender role, namely being a passive partner.

You'll note that Plato, Philo, Plutarch, and Pseudo-Lucian all argue that youths who have sex with men become effeminate. This suggests that Paul might have been using the word malakoi to describe the passive partner because he too believed that the passive partner would become effeminate. Or he may simply have used it because it had become a common word for the passive partner.

That leaves us with arsenokoitai, which is a much more difficult word because, as you rightly state, the first person to use it (as far as the surviving records show) is Paul. There really is no certainty as to what Paul had in mind when he coined the word (literally, it means "male-bed" or "male-sleeping"), but the fact that it is paired with malakoi suggests that Paul had the active partner in homosexuality in mind.

The question of whether Paul saw homosexuals as perverting gender roles is an interesting one. A gentleman who did a very long paper on the history of malakos thinks not; he thinks that Paul simply was referring to active and passive partners. On the other hand, a gay gentleman I know proposed in this paper that Paul did indeed have gender variance in mind in the Romans passage - not the gender variance of homosexuals, but rather the gender variance of certain pagan priests and priestesses who were potential rivals to Christianity. That gentleman was able to put forward the powerful point that this interpretation of the Romans passage appears in one of the Church Fathers.

My conclusion is:

1) Arsenokoitai and malakoi in 1 Corinthians probably refer to the active and passive partners in homosexuality, since Paul's passage about homosexuals in Romans is strikingly similar to other anti-homosexuality passages from the fourth century BC to the first century AD, which all use imagery for the passive partner that is similar to the imagery implied in the word malakoi.

2) Paul might have chosen the word malakoi in order to condemn gender variance in the passive partners.

3) Alternatively, the passage might be condemning gender variance of some other sort, without referring to homosexuality.

What I think is unlikely is that Paul thought, "Homosexuality is okay, but homosexual rape is wrong." If you look at those anti-homosexuality passages again, you'll see that violence and seduction is a constant theme in them. Like some anti-homosexuality folk today, classical opponents of homosexuality simply did not make a division between "good" homosexuals and "bad" homosexuals. They thought that all homosexuals were bad (with the possible exception of seduced youths, but even there condemnation was likely), and that this badness manifested itself in a variety of ways, including seduction and rape.

If you read those passages as though they referred to modern-day boylovers, you'll get a sense of the emotional impact that the speakers were trying to make. Just as today there is No Such Thing As A Good Boylover in the eyes of opponents to boylove, so too back then there was No Such Thing As A Good Pederast in the eyes of opponents to pederasty.

I'm inclined to think that Paul was in this category. What I find greatly puzzling (except in the case of Christian Fundamentalists) is why people should think this has anything to do with whether homosexuality or pederasty is acceptable for a modern-day Christian.

Paul was a product of his time. He sent an escaped slave back to his master, which can be regarded as a compassionate act in the context of his time, but which would be a violation of human rights if it happened today. Likewise, he required that wives obey their husbands; his passage on this is very liberal within the context of his time, but not within the context of today.

So, while I think it's interesting to speculate about what Paul thought about homosexuality and pederasty, it's hard for me to understand how any non-Fundamentalist Christian could consider these passages as settling the matter of what constitutes acceptable Christian behavior.

Dusk