An interesting piece on current trends on scholarly analysis of Romans 1:26-27

"Some scholarship of late, of which Porter’s article is the most thorough example, has noted that Romans 1:18-32 does not represent Paul’s view, but the prevailing view of Gentiles among many Jews at the time, which this apostle to the Gentiles feels compelled to refute. Building off of the scholarship of J.C. O’Neill (who calls it “a traditional tract which belongs essentially to the missionary literature of Hellenistic Judaism”) and E.P. Sanders (who explains that “Paul takes over to an unusual degree homiletical material from Diaspora Judaism”), Porter ultimately concludes that “in 2:1-16, as well as through Romans as a whole, Paul, as part of his Gentile mission, challenges, argues against, and refutes both the content of the discourse and the practice of using such discourses. If that is the case then the ideas in Rom. 1.18-32 are not Paul’s. They are ideas which obstruct Paul’s Gentile mission theology and practice.”

In Short – the Ideas in 1:26-27 – are ideas that Romans is being written by Paul specifically to warn Christians from holding.

Edit – somehow I lost the link to the article – sorry !

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2013/10/romans-126-27-a-clobber-passage-that-should-lose-its-wallop/

Yes James and what you say is correct – but the point these scholars are making is quite a different one

and is ONLY relevant to Romans

What they are saying in effect is that – Paul is saying (in Romans) that those who say those bad things about Gentiles are WRONG.

So the the irony here is – what these (and there – apparently – are a growing number of them) scholars – are saying – is that those who quote Romans to attack sinners (such as Gays) – are committing the VERY sins that Paul is preaching against and telling the Romans NOT TO DO.

So when someone quotes Romans and says Gays are sinning – they are missing the entire point of Romans which is to tell them to NOT behave like that and thus they are committing the very sins Romans was written to preach against.

Kind of amusng.. – but the scholars point is its because they have taken verses in isolation and not read the book as a whole.