For gay relations, it was really St. Paul who clarified things for us. He greatly expanded on the levitical statements and laid out an actual causal perspective on what was biblically disapproved (I won't say forbidden, because Paul was not legalist). Now, you've never been a gay man, but if you had, you could read Paul's statements in Romans and see a description there about how people were led to take up the sorts of actions Paul criticized. They 1) turned their hearts away from the Lord and 2) abandoned the heterosexual spouses God had given them (whether actual spouses or theoretical ones, it's not completely clear)and then 3) gave themselves up to lusts that were against either their own intrinsic nature or a Plato-like concept of natural ideality -- again, it's not completely clear.

Bible readers routinely think that it's paradoxical for people to give themselves up to lusts that are against their nature, so I always need to cite the example of prison sex. People get horny enough and in many cases, they will do these things with a gender that is not their first choice or, especially in rural areas, with animals. And I mean, everyone knows this, so if you at first found your mind thinking "that's a contradiction," ask yourself why. It's perfectly plausible that Paul could be condemning specifically this sort of turning against one's nature.

Western people are very influenced by Plato, whose ideas of nature were actually very close to shamanism. He thought everything was represented in some higher version of reality by an Idea, so that there was a prototype Goose, a prototype Man, a prototype Woman, a prototype Nature, and so on. Shamanists believe in such prototypes; so for example you can have Eagle or Capybara or Deer as your protective spirit. When platonically influenced people read Paul talking about nature, they often infer that he is talking about the Idea of Nature. In other words, they assume Paul has in mind an ideal nature that prototype Man and prototype Woman must conform to. Then when Paul says that men have turned para physin, against nature, they think this means that they have repudiated an ideal superstructure, written into the cosmos, that is mandated for Man and Woman as prototypes. Paul's comments about hair length (that a man with long hair is against nature) especially seem to fit that idea.

It's possibly that Paul had platonist ideas - it's even possible that God has platonist ideas... but I don't think so. I think that if this sort of shamanic stereotyping of beings were part of the gist of God's love, we would live in a different and much less nuanced world. I think it's much more sensible to interpret "against nature" as meaning, against a person's actual nature -- not against the ideal nature of their Prototype. Long hair in man seems "against nature" to Paul because men do things like mortal combat and building construction where it's a liability, not because the prototype Man has short hair. That's an inference -- Paul never explains his haircut ideas, but one has to infer one way or the other. Platonist or realist.

So what it boils down to is: does the bible give a really clumsy, completely inaccurate account of homosexuality and then condemn it, or does it condemn something that it accurately describes?

Since there IS a REAL phenomenon that Paul's description in Romans accurately fits, I see no reason to believe that the Bible has made a sociological fool of itself by converting to Platonic Shamanism via Paul.

I have to go to lunch so I must leave the rest of the questions lol.