It's hard to tell whether the poster is still around in all of this noise. If so, I'd like to comment on the original questions
First, while I don't think the Bible, properly understood, condemns all gay sex, I have concerns about the attitude of your posting. I think the right approach for a new Christian is to understand that having a relationship with God is going to change some things for you, and it may be things you currently don't think you'd want to change. I worry about someone who has aspects of their life they're not prepared to submit to God's judgement. However realistically, we all do have such areas, so in reality I'm not all that worried about you. Being a Christian is a long-term thing. In time you may come to realize something has to change, but it may well not be in the area you're afraid of, but something else entirely.
Presumably you wouldn't be asking the question unless you had reason to think that God exists and cares about you. I'd suggest to you that the right approach is to go ahead, and to understand that you'll find out over time more about what it means. God loves both you and your partner. If he has other things in mind, it will be things that will be better. And it may well not involve your sexual relationship at all, but something else.
As to what the Bible says, you've gotten a sense of that already from the discussion here. As to direct statements, there are two classes: the OT, and Paul's letters. The exact role of the OT law for Christians is actually hotly debated, but people in this forum are likely to tell you that the OT Holiness Code doesn't apply to Christians. Certainly we ignore other aspects of it, such as the kosher rules. The classic Christian approach is that the Holiness Code was part of a specific covenant with the Jews, which doesn't apply to us. However God is still the same as in the OT, so we'd expect overlap between the OT code and what Christians should do. How to identify which things are part of those continuing principles is contentious. Personally I don't see any reason to think that homosexuality is the kind of basic moral principle that carries over from the Holiness Code to us.
Of the NT statements, I'm inclined to agree with others that Paul was thinking of homosexuality as he saw it in Greco-Roman culture, where it was part of a pattern of abuse. Although I'm not an expert in 1st Cent culture, what I know about pagan sexual practices seems to justify Paul's judgement quite well. That doesn't mean that there weren't happily partnered gay people in the 1st Cent. I'm sure there were. I also think it's going too far to think that Paul knew about gays whose sex he thought we OK, and was limiting his statements to abusive gay relationships. Reading between the lines, I don't think he imagined that there might be gays whose sex would be acceptable. At any rate, liberals take Paul's judgements as models of how to apply Jesus' teachings to real-life situations, but not necessarily direct answers for our situation.
There's a general assumption among conservatives that I'd like to correct. Views on sex in this forum are not necessarily any less restrictive than 1st Cent Jewish views. In general 20th/21st Cent America, and the more liberal Christians, have been moving in the direction of looking at the quality of relationships. We're sensitive to a whole set of issues, including imbalance of power (which limits real consent), and other types of abusive relationships. In effect we're trying to replace fixed lists of who can do what with analyses that really look at the effect on people. E.g. today many of us would say that sex between a minister and a member of the congregation is dangerous, just as between doctor and patient. The analysis behind this simply isn't present in the 1st Cent. We're also more sensitive to the different things that can lead to women and children being taken advantage of. Yet the basic principles of being concerned about abuse of the weak is present in the prophets (whose stock language always talks about support for widows and orphans) and Jesus. I think what we're doing is exactly what Jesus did in Matthew 5, which was to take many of the 10 commandments, look at their intent, and replace the legalism with an honest look at intent and likely consequences. The result for Jesus was in some ways more restrictive than the original law, and i think that is the case for our sexual principles as well. Maybe there are Christians for which anything goes, but that's not the case for the mainline, of which I'm a member.
But this is just another part of the liberal / conservative split, where we tend to look at the Bible in terms of broad goals and models of how to look at a situation, and conservative tend to look at it in terms of specific rules that apply to all times and places. I think we know enough about both Jesus and Paul to know that their approach is closer to the liberals than the conservatives.
