Concerning Roman slavery, the status of as much as half the populace, Paul said if you get an opportunity to be free, take it. This was different than what translators call "slavery" under the Old Covenant Law. Not only were those in servitude released the 7th year, they were given enough land, seed, livestock and the like to be self-sufficient, providing for their families and able to develop their own business. If the family they were apprenticed to was willing and the "slave" agreed, he committed himself and whatever was his to serve his master. As a symbol of this relationship His ear was was pierced to a door by an awl and he wore a gold ring in it thereafter. This was being a "bond-slave," which is what Paul called himself in relation to Jesus his Master.
I have explained repeatedly, as have several others, that eating pork, Kosher law, is not the same as moral law. Christians for a couple thousand years have held mosaic ritual law does not apply to the Church. They also have upheld a continuity between Old and New Testament morality. While things like the death penalty for homosexual behavior was seen as politically relevant to Israelite law, not Church law. Even the period of a couple of hundred years when not only homosexuals, but those possessing the Bible in their own language were punished by death, it was the state, such as Spain, who performed the executions, not the Roman Catholic Church, though it was under their instigation. I refuse to accept any sectarian Institutional religion under the bureaucratic control of other men as the legitimate Church. This should be obvious to any unbiased observer. I certainly abhor the later abuses of the Inquisition as does any disciple of Jesus. To a large extent it was believing Him to torture myriads in the lake of fire that got them into such an evil mess.
To say what the Bible says about homosexuality being a sin is no longer relevant because we are now under the love laws forgets that both the prohibition of homosexuality and that we should love was written at the same time, both in Hebrew and Greek scripture. These are not incompatible.
One of the greatest harms of homosexuality is the loss of so many wonderful children that will never get to exist. We are to multiply and be fruitful. This is a hard sell in our day when the popular misconception that so much is to be blamed on over population has so transfixed the uninformed it is hard to persuade them otherwise. Population control is people control. Some looming problems in having enough water, for instance, are engineering challenges that need to be met, not by murdering millions, but finding how to release 33 times the water in all the oceans and rivers from selite (or, cellite?) a mineral 2 to 5 kilometers under the surface all over the world.
Not having a family not only tends to make men more mean spirited and self-centered, having that extra time means they infiltrate bureaucracies and perpetrate their own values. A couple of people that individually could support a family and instead spend it on themselves change the values of those around them. In a neighborhood where others of like kind have gathered, the property values go up and families can't afford to live there anymore. This is literal "gentrification" of a neighborhood. Those nearby raise their sale prices and so comes artificially inflated property values, and so on. There are traceable effects in a society that takes up openly flaunted homosexuality. This indecency coarsens the culture and is hand in hand with increased violence. Thirteen of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were homosexual and they weren't known for gentleness. More could be said.
A key to Romans chapter one is that it is a culture, not individuals Paul is discussing. "They, their, themselves, those," the plural is used over and over. It's not "a man," but, "men." It's not "that woman," but "their women." Our society was publicly heterosexual when I was growing up. Whatever was behind closed doors tended to stay behind closed doors. Now there is much homosexuality in the public eye. When it says, "the males, besides, leaving the natural use of the female" it is the change of course of a culture which is being pointed out. God lets a people fill up their cup of iniquity before he makes them drink His cup of wrath. Some rightly think God will judge us for such; but, the message is homosexuality itself is the judgement against a culture as it is going down for the count. "God gave them over!"
