Romans 1: 21-27 is all about role-reversal. “Although they knew God, they did not honour him as God” (21). Instead, exchanging the “glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (23), and “truth about God for a lie” (25), they “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” and thus, “claiming to be wise, they became fools” (22). Notice the constant contrasts and role-reversals: immortal/mortal, truth/lie, creature/Creator, wise/fools. Now pay attention to the punishment which descends on them for such rebellious insubordination: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves… For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (24, 26-7). Another role-reversal, this time along male/female lines! The language of God “giving them up” is very important here. They want role-reversal? They get it! God gives them up to it. Their very role-reversing rebellion (creature/Creator) has become their role-reversing punishment (male/female), which, taken as a whole, is what? Yet another role-reversal (rebellion/punishment)! The genius of this passage is incredible!!
So what does this tell us about homosexuality? It is the pinnacle of rebellion. When God gave sinners up to their own devices, the end to which they arrived was homosexuality. Are homosexual sinners—(note that I do not say simply ‘homosexuals’. Homosexuality is merely the particular form their rebellion takes, not a part of their identity)—therefore to be treated any different from other sinners? Are they to be treated with revulsion rather than love? Absolutely not. They are to be loved just as much, if not MORE, than any other sinner. Nevertheless, their actions must never be glossed over as ‘who they are’. Their actions are the grossest manifestation of mankind’s rebellion against God. The male/female role-reversal is a vivid picture of the Creator/creature reversal.
Perhaps the supreme irony of the entire passage is that those who seek to usurp the role of Creator, in their sinful stupor, lose even the creative power—that is, the procreative power—they had as heterosexual creatures. Having set themselves up as homosexual creators, their sham is brutally exposed by their inability to do that which creators do—create! Claiming to be wise, they have become fools and their pathetic, impotent, foolishness is there for all to see. He who sits in the heavens laughs them to scorn.
What about identity in this passage? The only identifying designation is “fool”. Homosexual behaviour is merely the manifestation (and punishment) of this foolishness. Romans 1 does not conceive men and women as homosexuals, but rather as fools and rebels. Homosexuality is the product of their identity, not their identity itself. So perhaps ancient Greek sexual conceptions according to Foucault are nothing more than biblical conceptions? Perhaps in one final, ironic role-reversal, the vehemently anti-Christian Foucault, in his analysis of a monstrously depraved sexual ethic, has helped us to form a more scriptural conception of homosexuality as rebellion rather than identity.