Tony's appeal to church tradition to arbitrate the ambiguities of Romans 1 has a fatal flaw.

It would surprise many modern people to know that the predominant form of homosexual activity in many traditional cultures is carried out by people who are heterosexual. In other words, the prevailing situation in prisons can and does form a major influence on traditional societies.

This is especially true in places where women are essentially unavailable for sex until marriage. The traffic in male-male sex among people who consider themselves perfectly straight (or the culturally relevant equivalent) is very high in, for example, Morocco. My Moroccan friend commented to me that "the problem with the gay community in western countries is that they're all 'women,' you know what I mean? Back home, almost everyone who wanted me was a 'real man'" There are many books about this sort of thing, such as Arno Schmitt and Jehoeda Sofer's "Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies" (Harrington Park Press, New York, 1992).

As was shown successively in two ancient societies, though, Greece and then later Rome, the practice of this same pseudo-homosexuality as part of a generally orgiastic atmosphere could become a fashion. Cultures could actually uphold bisexual practices as a norm and commit most males, at least, to bisexual promiscuity, sometimes with religious overtones. The sort of deep attraction that fosters a lifetime committed relationship tends to get lost in the shuffle in this sort of milieu.

Those who ARE same-sex-attracted, in these sorts of societies, tend to get mixed in with the homosexually active straights, sometimes serving as the 'bottoms,' or 'malakoi' as Paul calls them. The same-sex-attracted guys who sort themselves out of this and form mutual couples are a small minority.

So the church's tradition was NOT based on ignorance of same-sex sex, but it WAS based on ignorance of true, by-nature homosexual people, their potential for fulfilled loving relationships, and their lack of potential for heterosexual relationships. The early church fathers simply refused to believe, to put it in a modern way, that there were any genuine gays, since they had overwhelming experience of pseudo-gays. They really thought everyone was heterosexual by nature, and only a sort of gluttony for sin would make them act otherwise. Would you challenge that? I think it would be very hard to dispute seriously. This led them to interpret Paul's passage in Romans platonically, taking Nature as a prescriptive ideal, rather than naturalistically, taking it as an accurate statement about true personal nature. This wasn't a religious error. It was a scientific error. It was like the flat earth theory. The flat-sexuality theory, is what it was. Everyone on the same plane.

We know the world is round now and we know that everyone isn't heterosexual by nature. The sun doesn't rise. Meanwhile, love hasn't changed. God's constant allows gay couples to love each other properly and finally, stop afflicting heterosexual spouses with marriages based on falsehood, deception, and error (and as I always must say, Cat is excluded, because his wife had the full briefing on what he was like before she married him. An incredibly honest man.)

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. There's an implication of 'change' in that phrase.