1. Siker seems to be offering a scholarly version of Matthew Vines' argument
It being "Paul can't be condemning what we think of as committed loving homosexual relationships, because he was thinking of bad things like prostitution or uncontrolled-lust homosexuality."
So, the idea is to claim that Paul's letters can't be enlisted to authorize contemporary homophobia since he wouldn't have known about the kinds of relationships gay Christians want to have now.
I appreciate the contemporary ethics of Siker's approach since homophobia is dehumanizing and harmful, but the idea that this approach inherently reflects "liberal leanings" (Siker's claim) ignores how plenty of liberals reject homophobia without trying to enlist and sanitize the Bible as support.
2. I disagree with the Innocent Paul claim as Vines postulated
It is true that Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources do not often feature something resembling "a committed loving queer sexual relationship," but this is where confusion often sets in; there must be a distinction between

• Whether such queer relationships were really nonexistent in Mediterranean antiquity and if writers were aware and
• Whether what's going on is that the dominant Greco-Roman sexual ideologies that shape our texts have no room for such relationships

According to dominant ideals, powerful men were supposed to actively penetrate those below themselves on the social and gender hierarchy; a man who delighted in being penetrated by another man was by relative definition effeminate, and thus not to be celebrated. Women loving and sexually engaging with other women meant they weren't being used by (the right) men, and thus Greek and Roman writers tended to disparage, ridicule, and reframe female homoeroticism.
But our texts aren't direct sociological data, they reflect and think with dominant sexual ideologies, which by definition erased/reframed divergent sexual and gender expressions. This is why the likes of Amy Richlin,[1] Bernadette Brooten,[2] Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson,[3] and Jimmy Hoke**[4]** have argued that even though our sources erase, reframe, and distort people who liked any non-normative sex and relationships in Mediterranean antiquity, they still existed.
Bottom line: Writers like Paul could certainly have been aware of queer sexualities and relationships that were not enslaved prostitution or pederasty. Folks like Vines and Siker unintentionally reinscribe the association between homoeroticism and pedophilia/sexual violence.
For what it's worth, everyone should read Richlin's article from 30 years ago. Doesn't matter whether you agree with all of her arguments, it's brilliant scholarship.
3. Corpus point of view
There's a related debate about whether our texts even have a category for something like sexual orientation or simply imagine sex via other grids like active vs. passive/penetrator vs. penetrated (e.g., see Craig Williams' excellent sketch of these paradigms in Roman literature**[5]**).
The most common scholarly opinion in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity gender-sex studies is that our sources don't reflect ideas like sexual orientation, so orientational categories aren't historically helpful for reading our texts.
Other scholars like Richlin and Brooten have critiqued these positions, though they still forcefully argue that our sources thought with overtly hierarchical patriarchal ideologies about sex, like penetrator and penetrated. This final point is something on which Richlin is often misrepresented, which is bizarre since she wrote one of the classic books for understanding such dominant sexual ideologies.[6]
4. Paul Romana
Romans 1:18-32's basic point is that Paul discussed the total moral failure of Gentiles by sketching their (feminizing) descent into being dominated by their passions, one of the resultant illustrations of the Gentiles being their domination by their passions through transgressing the gendered order, exemplified by Gentile men losing sexual control of "their women" (i.e., these men are failed men from this angle) and each other in 1:26-27 - an inversion of the normative sexual order.
Paul treated male-male anal penetration as a straight illustration of Gentile corruption and domination by their passions. It's part of his grander point that Gentiles became (effeminately) enslaved by their passions (see Stanley Stowers' classic articulation of this decline-of-civilization reading of Rom 1:18-32**[7]**).
The key issue here is that there's no literary reason to think he only had in mind enslaved prostitution or pederasty, ANY male-male anal penetration upended the normative gender order. If anything, he might have indicated elsewhere that free men penetrating (raping) their slaves (gender irrelevant) was okay since that use of slaves was acceptable within many moral schemes; Paul never objected to it, and some passages potentially align with treating enslaved humans as legitimate non-marriage sexual outlets (e.g., as argued by Jennifer Glancy**[8]** regarding 1 Thess 4:4's εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι("that each of you know his own vessel to possess in sanctification and honor")).
5. Linguistic flexibility
There's no reason to limit οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται of 1 Cor 6:9 to prostitution; "malakos" means "soft"/"effeminate." In Greek texts, it often does refer to men who are penetrated sexually - obviously effeminizing - but a man who was unrestrained or excessive in his penetrating of women is likewise an example of "effeminate" in Greek sources.
ἀρσενοκοίτης's meaning remains debated, but the etymological game of making it "man-bedders" is problematic; rather than get bogged down in this lexical discussion, the larger point regarding Siker is, again, that the issue of whether "committed same-sex relationships" are in view is irrelevant.
Paul listed effeminate Gentiles as those who will not inherit the kingdom of God; a male prostitute is by definition effeminate for these discourses, but so would a man in a "committed same-sex relationship" who is anally penetrated.
6. Futility
I don't get why "liberal-leaning" scholars think they can salvage a moral Bible by handwaving Paul's (what we can redescribe as) homophobia, even if all of Siker's claims were true, Paul's logic is entirely premised on reprehensibly misogynist gender ideologies that animate his other arguments, so even trying to save the dude from Those Two Bad Verses leaves you with the steaming animal manure that is said premise.
Hope this helps!
Sources
[1] "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," JHS 3 [1993]: 523-73
[2] Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]
[3] "Lusty Ladies in the Roman Literary Imaginary," in Ancient Sex: New Essays, ed R. Blondell and K. Ormand [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015], 231-51
[4] Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021], 27-37
[5] Roman Homosexuality, 2d Ed [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010] [6] The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, Rev. Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
[7] A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]
[8] Slavery in Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]

1. Siker seems to be offering a scholarly version of Matthew Vines' argument
It being "Paul can't be condemning what we think of as committed loving homosexual relationships, because he was thinking of bad things like prostitution or uncontrolled-lust homosexuality."
So, the idea is to claim that Paul's letters can't be enlisted to authorize contemporary homophobia since he wouldn't have known about the kinds of relationships gay Christians want to have now.
I appreciate the contemporary ethics of Siker's approach since homophobia is dehumanizing and harmful, but the idea that this approach inherently reflects "liberal leanings" (Siker's claim) ignores how plenty of liberals reject homophobia without trying to enlist and sanitize the Bible as support.
2. I disagree with the Innocent Paul claim as Vines postulated
It is true that Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources do not often feature something resembling "a committed loving queer sexual relationship," but this is where confusion often sets in; there must be a distinction between

• Whether such queer relationships were really nonexistent in Mediterranean antiquity and if writers were aware and
• Whether what's going on is that the dominant Greco-Roman sexual ideologies that shape our texts have no room for such relationships

According to dominant ideals, powerful men were supposed to actively penetrate those below themselves on the social and gender hierarchy; a man who delighted in being penetrated by another man was by relative definition effeminate, and thus not to be celebrated. Women loving and sexually engaging with other women meant they weren't being used by (the right) men, and thus Greek and Roman writers tended to disparage, ridicule, and reframe female homoeroticism.
But our texts aren't direct sociological data, they reflect and think with dominant sexual ideologies, which by definition erased/reframed divergent sexual and gender expressions. This is why the likes of Amy Richlin,[1] Bernadette Brooten,[2] Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson,[3] and Jimmy Hoke**[4]** have argued that even though our sources erase, reframe, and distort people who liked any non-normative sex and relationships in Mediterranean antiquity, they still existed.
Bottom line: Writers like Paul could certainly have been aware of queer sexualities and relationships that were not enslaved prostitution or pederasty. Folks like Vines and Siker unintentionally reinscribe the association between homoeroticism and pedophilia/sexual violence.
For what it's worth, everyone should read Richlin's article from 30 years ago. Doesn't matter whether you agree with all of her arguments, it's brilliant scholarship.
3. Corpus point of view
There's a related debate about whether our texts even have a category for something like sexual orientation or simply imagine sex via other grids like active vs. passive/penetrator vs. penetrated (e.g., see Craig Williams' excellent sketch of these paradigms in Roman literature**[5]**).
The most common scholarly opinion in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity gender-sex studies is that our sources don't reflect ideas like sexual orientation, so orientational categories aren't historically helpful for reading our texts.
Other scholars like Richlin and Brooten have critiqued these positions, though they still forcefully argue that our sources thought with overtly hierarchical patriarchal ideologies about sex, like penetrator and penetrated. This final point is something on which Richlin is often misrepresented, which is bizarre since she wrote one of the classic books for understanding such dominant sexual ideologies.[6]
4. Paul Romana
Romans 1:18-32's basic point is that Paul discussed the total moral failure of Gentiles by sketching their (feminizing) descent into being dominated by their passions, one of the resultant illustrations of the Gentiles being their domination by their passions through transgressing the gendered order, exemplified by Gentile men losing sexual control of "their women" (i.e., these men are failed men from this angle) and each other in 1:26-27 - an inversion of the normative sexual order.
Paul treated male-male anal penetration as a straight illustration of Gentile corruption and domination by their passions. It's part of his grander point that Gentiles became (effeminately) enslaved by their passions (see Stanley Stowers' classic articulation of this decline-of-civilization reading of Rom 1:18-32**[7]**).
The key issue here is that there's no literary reason to think he only had in mind enslaved prostitution or pederasty, ANY male-male anal penetration upended the normative gender order. If anything, he might have indicated elsewhere that free men penetrating (raping) their slaves (gender irrelevant) was okay since that use of slaves was acceptable within many moral schemes; Paul never objected to it, and some passages potentially align with treating enslaved humans as legitimate non-marriage sexual outlets (e.g., as argued by Jennifer Glancy**[8]** regarding 1 Thess 4:4's εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι("that each of you know his own vessel to possess in sanctification and honor")).
5. Linguistic flexibility
There's no reason to limit οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται of 1 Cor 6:9 to prostitution; "malakos" means "soft"/"effeminate." In Greek texts, it often does refer to men who are penetrated sexually - obviously effeminizing - but a man who was unrestrained or excessive in his penetrating of women is likewise an example of "effeminate" in Greek sources.
ἀρσενοκοίτης's meaning remains debated, but the etymological game of making it "man-bedders" is problematic; rather than get bogged down in this lexical discussion, the larger point regarding Siker is, again, that the issue of whether "committed same-sex relationships" are in view is irrelevant.
Paul listed effeminate Gentiles as those who will not inherit the kingdom of God; a male prostitute is by definition effeminate for these discourses, but so would a man in a "committed same-sex relationship" who is anally penetrated.
6. Futility
I don't get why "liberal-leaning" scholars think they can salvage a moral Bible by handwaving Paul's (what we can redescribe as) homophobia, even if all of Siker's claims were true, Paul's logic is entirely premised on reprehensibly misogynist gender ideologies that animate his other arguments, so even trying to save the dude from Those Two Bad Verses leaves you with the steaming animal manure that is said premise.
Hope this helps!
Sources
[1] "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," JHS 3 [1993]: 523-73
[2] Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]
[3] "Lusty Ladies in the Roman Literary Imaginary," in Ancient Sex: New Essays, ed R. Blondell and K. Ormand [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015], 231-51
[4] Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021], 27-37
[5] Roman Homosexuality, 2d Ed [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010] [6] The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, Rev. Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
[7] A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]
[8] Slavery in Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]

1. Siker seems to be offering a scholarly version of Matthew Vines' argument
It being "Paul can't be condemning what we think of as committed loving homosexual relationships, because he was thinking of bad things like prostitution or uncontrolled-lust homosexuality."
So, the idea is to claim that Paul's letters can't be enlisted to authorize contemporary homophobia since he wouldn't have known about the kinds of relationships gay Christians want to have now.
I appreciate the contemporary ethics of Siker's approach since homophobia is dehumanizing and harmful, but the idea that this approach inherently reflects "liberal leanings" (Siker's claim) ignores how plenty of liberals reject homophobia without trying to enlist and sanitize the Bible as support.
2. I disagree with the Innocent Paul claim as Vines postulated
It is true that Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources do not often feature something resembling "a committed loving queer sexual relationship," but this is where confusion often sets in; there must be a distinction between

• Whether such queer relationships were really nonexistent in Mediterranean antiquity and if writers were aware and
• Whether what's going on is that the dominant Greco-Roman sexual ideologies that shape our texts have no room for such relationships

According to dominant ideals, powerful men were supposed to actively penetrate those below themselves on the social and gender hierarchy; a man who delighted in being penetrated by another man was by relative definition effeminate, and thus not to be celebrated. Women loving and sexually engaging with other women meant they weren't being used by (the right) men, and thus Greek and Roman writers tended to disparage, ridicule, and reframe female homoeroticism.
But our texts aren't direct sociological data, they reflect and think with dominant sexual ideologies, which by definition erased/reframed divergent sexual and gender expressions. This is why the likes of Amy Richlin,[1] Bernadette Brooten,[2] Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson,[3] and Jimmy Hoke**[4]** have argued that even though our sources erase, reframe, and distort people who liked any non-normative sex and relationships in Mediterranean antiquity, they still existed.
Bottom line: Writers like Paul could certainly have been aware of queer sexualities and relationships that were not enslaved prostitution or pederasty. Folks like Vines and Siker unintentionally reinscribe the association between homoeroticism and pedophilia/sexual violence.
For what it's worth, everyone should read Richlin's article from 30 years ago. Doesn't matter whether you agree with all of her arguments, it's brilliant scholarship.
3. Corpus point of view
There's a related debate about whether our texts even have a category for something like sexual orientation or simply imagine sex via other grids like active vs. passive/penetrator vs. penetrated (e.g., see Craig Williams' excellent sketch of these paradigms in Roman literature**[5]**).
The most common scholarly opinion in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity gender-sex studies is that our sources don't reflect ideas like sexual orientation, so orientational categories aren't historically helpful for reading our texts.
Other scholars like Richlin and Brooten have critiqued these positions, though they still forcefully argue that our sources thought with overtly hierarchical patriarchal ideologies about sex, like penetrator and penetrated. This final point is something on which Richlin is often misrepresented, which is bizarre since she wrote one of the classic books for understanding such dominant sexual ideologies.[6]
4. Paul Romana
Romans 1:18-32's basic point is that Paul discussed the total moral failure of Gentiles by sketching their (feminizing) descent into being dominated by their passions, one of the resultant illustrations of the Gentiles being their domination by their passions through transgressing the gendered order, exemplified by Gentile men losing sexual control of "their women" (i.e., these men are failed men from this angle) and each other in 1:26-27 - an inversion of the normative sexual order.
Paul treated male-male anal penetration as a straight illustration of Gentile corruption and domination by their passions. It's part of his grander point that Gentiles became (effeminately) enslaved by their passions (see Stanley Stowers' classic articulation of this decline-of-civilization reading of Rom 1:18-32**[7]**).
The key issue here is that there's no literary reason to think he only had in mind enslaved prostitution or pederasty, ANY male-male anal penetration upended the normative gender order. If anything, he might have indicated elsewhere that free men penetrating (raping) their slaves (gender irrelevant) was okay since that use of slaves was acceptable within many moral schemes; Paul never objected to it, and some passages potentially align with treating enslaved humans as legitimate non-marriage sexual outlets (e.g., as argued by Jennifer Glancy**[8]** regarding 1 Thess 4:4's εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι("that each of you know his own vessel to possess in sanctification and honor")).
5. Linguistic flexibility
There's no reason to limit οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται of 1 Cor 6:9 to prostitution; "malakos" means "soft"/"effeminate." In Greek texts, it often does refer to men who are penetrated sexually - obviously effeminizing - but a man who was unrestrained or excessive in his penetrating of women is likewise an example of "effeminate" in Greek sources.
ἀρσενοκοίτης's meaning remains debated, but the etymological game of making it "man-bedders" is problematic; rather than get bogged down in this lexical discussion, the larger point regarding Siker is, again, that the issue of whether "committed same-sex relationships" are in view is irrelevant.
Paul listed effeminate Gentiles as those who will not inherit the kingdom of God; a male prostitute is by definition effeminate for these discourses, but so would a man in a "committed same-sex relationship" who is anally penetrated.
6. Futility
I don't get why "liberal-leaning" scholars think they can salvage a moral Bible by handwaving Paul's (what we can redescribe as) homophobia, even if all of Siker's claims were true, Paul's logic is entirely premised on reprehensibly misogynist gender ideologies that animate his other arguments, so even trying to save the dude from Those Two Bad Verses leaves you with the steaming animal manure that is said premise.
Hope this helps!
Sources
[1] "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," JHS 3 [1993]: 523-73
[2] Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]
[3] "Lusty Ladies in the Roman Literary Imaginary," in Ancient Sex: New Essays, ed R. Blondell and K. Ormand [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015], 231-51
[4] Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021], 27-37
[5] Roman Homosexuality, 2d Ed [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010] [6] The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, Rev. Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
[7] A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]
[8] Slavery in Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]