Ok so to address the list of things that you stated are abominations,
It both has a meaning in the ritual sense, such as relating to unclean foods, idols, and mixed marriages, and in the ethical sense, such as relating to wickedness
So all of these things (with the exception of Idolatry) are now acceptable. "Unclean food" is in reference to pork (I am assuming and please correct me if I am wrong). I think that there are very few Christians who cut pork out of their diet for any sort of religious reasons. And mixed marriage became acceptable less than a century ago.
I'm going to probably make a few of you uncomfortable with this next statement, but the point of this post is to speculate and discuss so why not? I think that homosexual people are kind of in a similar boat as black people were back before they gained rights, and even to an (much lesser) extent today. There were many religions who did not see black people as being actual people, and there are some sections of Christianity who state (even today) that black people are lesser beings. I think that this is totally wrong and I hope that all of you can agree with me on that. The issue is that white Christians could not accept that someone who is so different looking from them could also be an equal Christian brother/sister. Hopefully someday in the future we will see that homosexual people are still good Christian people, they are just different types of people. I know that this is kind of an interesting comparison, but I think that it can help show the relation.
If anyone, especially one who calls themselves a Christian, doesn't show homosexual people as much kindness, love, compassion, and friendliness as anyone else, than I'd say that person doesn't know Christ very well at all. That's certainly unacceptable for anyone who claims to be His disciple.
I really like this statement. I don't really have much to say about it besides the fact that I wish that more people felt this way too.
So I found the Romans quote to be interesting, so I looked it up in my new Bible that I recently obtained. (I previously had a children's Bible, one of the pocket sized Gideons(?) bibles, and a new-agey type Bible that i decided not to use when Jesus started referring to the currency of the time as "dollars" and God said something along the lines of "You die fool!"...I felt like that wasn't a great translation). My bible now is a King James translation. In my version, it says "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one towards another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was met". When I read this passage, I see it as saying that God gave man and woman a different type of affection that is "unseemly" which is defined as "not according with established standards of good form or taste". Now let's recall that by this definition, many things are said to be "unseemly"; eating pork and racially mixed marriage being two recent examples.
My bible's translation of the Corintians quote states "Know ye not that unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God". Now, I don't know exactly what "abusers of themselves with mankind" means, like, at all. Can someone explain this to me? When my bible says effeminate it doesn't immediately make me jump to the conclusion "gay people". There are heterosexual people who are effeminate as well as there are non-effeminate homosexual people. In fact, there are homosexual people who are more "masculine" than some heterosexual people. The Bible has been very specific when it is discussing homosexuality ("the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one towards another; men with men working that which is unseemly" as an example). So why would the bible suddenly abandon such specificity and use such a general term as "effeminate" to reference a homosexual person?
And KBCid, I don't see what your lines are supposed to be in reference to in this conversation, unless you are referring to something that happened in the past that I missed. It seems like you're just saying adultery is a sin (agreed) and that looking at a girl and thinking that she is attractive is the same thing as committing adultery. If that second fact is true, I think that most of us if not all of the world has committed adultery many times over. And I agree with Ivellious. If homosexual sex is on the same level as adultery and adultery is looking at someone and thinking "damn, he/she is fine"...then we're all SOL. lol sorry for my casual language there
