“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death” (Lev 20:13 NKJV).
It is significant that the sexual sins mentioned in Romans chapter 1 are not shown to be part of idolatrous worship but as judgment by God because the people refused to acknowledge him as God; they are mentioned as being the result of idolatry. I’m not saying that the worship wasn’t sexual, but Paul doesn’t specify. So the contention that Paul is describing a situation where the worship was sexual is an argument from silence. And therefore it is not essential to know the historical and cultural context of this chapter in order to grasp what Paul means. What is made clear is that the people, both men and women, knew God but worshipped him in the forms of animals and birds and reptiles (1:23, 25). And therefore God gave them up to perverted sexual practices (1:24-27 NKJV)).
This understanding of Romans chapter 1 changes everything for the view that loving, monogamous, committed, same-sex sexual relationships are acceptable to God. And it means we can take the passage as it stands, at face value, and conclude that Paul is denouncing same-sex sex for both men and women without having to see it in the context of idolatrous worship. It is true that pagan worship in ancient times was highly sexual, but both in the time of the Old Testament, including Israel’s apostasy, and in the time of the Roman world, homosexuality was “abomination” (Leviticus chapters 18 and 20), and “against nature” according to Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Leviticus chapters 18 and 20, homosexuality is intrinsically sinful, and now Paul graphically reiterates this in Romans chapter 1.
How can anyone not see, after honestly reading Romans 1:24-28, that God regards same-sex sex as sinful? Just look at the adjectives that describe it – they’re God’s words and they reveal his hatred of such practice. It doesn’t make a scrap of difference whether same-sex sex is practiced in religious worship or in a loving and monogamous relationship – or whether between two males or two females – same-sex sex is same-sex sex whatever the context or the setting., and you simply can’t avoid that. All the adjectives used in this passage about same-sex sex are powerful and condemning.
How can anyone think that if God’s judgment on those who denied him was to give them over to a sinful lifestyle consisting of same-sex sex, which he denounces in the strongest terms, it would acceptable in the context of a same-sex marriage? How can same-sex sex be both judgment for sin and a blessing by God in a same-sex marriage?