Footnote

a Reference has been made to the apostle’s statements at Romans 1:24-27 regarding “the natural use” of male and female bodies. As is evident and has been consistently acknowledged, these statements are made in the context of homosexuality. They do not make any direct reference to sexual practices by husband and wife. It must also be acknowledged that even those love expressions that are completely normal and common between husband and wife would be “unnatural” for persons of the same sex and immoral for unmarried people. Whatever guidance these apostolic statements provide as regards sex practices within marriage, therefore, is indirect and must be viewed as only of a persuasive but not a conclusive nature, that is, not the basis for setting up hard and fast standards for judgment. At the same time there is the possibility and perhaps a likelihood that some sex practices now engaged in by husband and wife were originally practiced only by homosexuals. If this should be the case, then certainly this would give these practices at least an unsavory origin. So the matter is not one to be lightly dismissed by the conscientious Christian simply because no direct reference to married persons appears in the aforementioned texts.