Like I said, it seems in that text, the things that “deserve death” are “gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, engenious parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”
I apologize if I’m telling you something you already know, but, because Paul is making a natural law argument here, and because Stoic conceptions of natural law are so important both in Paul’s writings in Romans, and in the Greco-Roman world of the early empire, I think it’s worth going over. Remember, Seneca, Nero’s advisor, was a pretty famous Stoic, as were the Republican politicians Cato the Younger and Cicero, who were held in high regard at the time. It wasn’t very long before Epictetus would appear on the scene, and raise Stoicism to even higher levels of popularity. So, in looking at this passage, you have to look at Stoic beliefs.
Stoicism believed that the universe was inherantly rational, and that everything in the universe abided by natural laws. So, everything in the universe existed for a purpose, and the purpose of everything could be logically determined. Not only did the physical universe obey certain natural, logical laws, but so did the moral universe. There were certain basic moral laws that could be logically derived, also, and the moral man acted in harmony with the laws of the universe. Man did evil, according to the Stoics, when he, either through ignorance or passion, violated the moral law and failed to act in harmony with the laws of the universe.
Now, for the Stoics, the natural end of sexuality was reproduction. That was its inherant purpose. The Stoics recognized that sexual activity was also pleasurable, but the Stoics didn’t see any value in pleasure. In fact, the Stoics believed that seeking pleasure was itself immoral. A person shouldn’t do a thing because it brings him pleasure, or causes him to avoid pain. A person should do a thing because it is Right.
So, for the Stoics, homosexual sex was a perfect example of a bad act. There was no possibility of reproduction, and it could only be done for pleasure. So, if a person was having homosexual sex, he was perverting the natural end of sexuality to satisfy a lust.
So, Paul is using the basic Stoic argument, and he’s applying it to the worship of God. Paul is saying that worshiping God is one of those natural, logical moral laws. He’s saying that it’s obvious that God exists and should be worshiped. However, he’s saying, the Romans are perverting that natural law, because instead of Rightly worshiping God, they’re worshiping idols.
So, this perversion of the natural worship of God leads to other perversions of natural ends, and he’s drawing the analogy there to homosexuality.
Worse than that, he’s saying, it leads them to become completely mentally disordered…so that they “do what ought not to be done”. They’ve surrendered themselves completely to wickedness.
Then, in the next chapter, he goes on to say that because of this, no one has any right to judge someone else as acting immorally, because the person who judges acts as immorally as the person he judges, and that, if God, who has the right to judge, because He’s perfect, chooses to show mercy, then people, who have no right to judge, shouldn’t be stricter in their judgements than God.