Ummm, this thread does seem to have wandered off topic, but as a point of accuracy the two words used in 1 Cor 6 are, I understand, generally assumed to refer to the active and passive homosexual partners. Even if not, what do you think Paul is discussing in Romans 1? Moreover, the Jewish Law is pretty clearly against homosexual relations, and both Jesus and Paul do not depart from the Law on sexual ethics; if anything, they intensify it.
So, regardless of your attitude to homosexuality in the present, the claim that the Bible writers were not against it is on pretty dodgy ground.
Roonwit
The relevant Greek words that Paul uses are arsenokoites and malakos. The former is a hapax legomenon, a word found so rarely that it occurs only occasionally within a single author's writings. There exists no contemporary writing or pre-Pauline writing that includes "arsenokoites". Commentators and translators have never had any agreement as to what this word meant as Paul used it. Hundreds of years after Paul the word is used in Christian penitentials in reference to what the people of the time regarded as an illicit sexual act between a man and a woman--referring to a man "arsenokoit-ing" his wife. Probably referring to anal penetration. Though this is, again, many hundreds of years after Paul.
In the Latin of the Vulgate the word arsenokoites is translated pretty literally as "masculorum concubitores", that is "male bedmates" or "concubining males", while in Martin Luther's German translation he renders it as "Knabenschander", that is "child molesters". In the Syriac translation (Peshitta) we find "ܫܳܟ݂ܒ݁ܰܝ ܥܰܡ ܕ݁ܶܟ݂ܪܶܐ" -- "[those that] lay down with males".
What's evident is that the word probably indicates a sexual activity involving men, which later is clearly associated with penetrative sex of the, ahem, back side (regardless of male or female). What is not clear, and some would want to suggest is clear, is that it condemns committed, monogamous romantic/sexual same-sex couples. That it would condemn pederasty, or even the taking of male prostitutes, seems quite likely given it likewise condemns porneia (prostitution). And further here seems to be something of a broad condemnation of Greco-Roman Pagan culture and religious practices, as it covers the worship of idols, prostitution (i.e. temple prostitution), the taking of male youths to bed (arsenokoites), and
malakos.
Malakos is another interesting word. Unlike arsenokoites it is extent in Greek literature of the time. It means "soft". Though in literary contexts tends to refer to cowardice and various "womanly" traits, as viewed from the perspective of Greek society. Women were "soft", that is they were weak, weak-willed, and cowardly (just a little bit of misogyny at work here). A man who exhibited such "womanly" traits was likewise "soft". Likewise, in Greek culture, male-male sexual pairing was not considered weak or soft, but considered strong and manly. A "real man" in that society was one who took both women and men to bed, because either way he could exhibit his masculine prowess. So attempting to treat malakos as a term to describe "gay-ness" is faulty since that word would almost certainly have never referred to any sort of male-male pairing, but would have probably been used to refer to certain men who adopted "feminine" (by the Greek definition) traits and thus became "soft" and ergo "unmanly". Those in the service of Adonis, as I recall, castrated themselves and offered themselves as androgynous prostitutes to others as just an example.
-CryptoLutheran
