Actually, Cat, as far as I've read, the only evidence for interpretations of these scriptures as having to do with homosexuality turn up in the middle ages. It seems that as long as you weren't married to a woman, weren't raping anyone, and weren't participating in a pagan ritual, no-one really cared if you got it on with a guy until then.

It was just before the middle ages that priestly celibacy became compulsory, and many priests and monks turned to each other for release and claiming that they were "abstaining from the flesh of women". This (clearly against the spirit of their vows, and in most cases the words as well) caused a huge internal scandal, and the first large-scale condemnation of homosexual acts. Scapegoating that is enforced by the church never goes away easily, and so it remains with us today.

This concept of Inclusive Orthodoxy is an attempt to look more carefully at the Scriptures, free of the enforced bigotry of centuries, to try to understand what God actually said. Something that we have had to do before, numerous times. Most recently, over gender equality, before that- racial equality, before that- slavery, before that- divine right of rule, before that- predestination, before that- selling of indulgences, before that- well, lets just say I've only begun to scratch the surface of the number of times we humans have grossly misunderstood the Word of God.

Now, you may not like what Mr. Cannon has to say in his brief paper, but I have yet to see a well-formed counter to his claims. At the very least, it calls into serious question the veracity of the mainline interpretation of those passages. And at the very least, where we are unsure of the Law of words, we should appeal to the Law of Love from which we know it is derived.

In Christ,
~CSL