Scot, as I’ve noted in my published work, an appeal to an alleged slavery analogy is simply a bad case of analogical reasoning. Such an appeal even contradicts the use of an exploitation and orientation argument that you adopt. If the Bible does not intend to indict committed homosexual unions entered into by homosexually oriented persons (as you erroneously believe), why make an argument from analogy that is grounded on the need to depart from Scripture’s stance?

As it is, the alleged slavery analogy actually has little in the way of substantive correspondence with the Bible’s view of homosexual practice. The Bible shows no vested interest in preserving slavery. In a society without a social welfare net slavery is sometimes the only alternative to starvation; otherwise it serves as a penal institution in place of standing prisons or as a means of processing prisoners of war. At a number of points Scripture exhibits a critical edge toward that institution: mandatory release dates, right of kinship redemption at any time, injunctions not to treat Israelites as slaves, protection of runaway slaves, the exodus from Egyptian as a symbol of Israel’s release from slavery, Paul’s letter to Philemon promoting the release of Onesimus, and so on. Relative to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East and of Greece and Rome, the biblical witness on slavery moves in the direction of curtailing that institution. Finally, there is no creation mandate for slavery. Slavery is not imaged as part of the pre-Fall structures of the world.

Scot, compare this certainly non-enthusiastic and often critical attitude toward the institution of slavery in Scripture with the Bible’s strong witness in favor of a male-female prerequisite: There is a strong creation mandate for such a prerequisite; the pages of Scripture show strong revulsion for homosexual practice and absolutely no accommodation; and ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity had the most rigorous opposition to homosexual practice of any known culture in the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin. Jesus in Mark 10 (parallel in Matt 19) treated a male-female prerequisite for marriage (and thus all sexual relations) as foundational for sexual ethics, including the limitation of sexual unions to two persons.

The only connection that homosexualist interpreters can make between the Bible’s critical tolerance of slavery and its deliberate abhorrence of all homosexual practice is that we have changed on the institution of slavery; therefore, they argue, we should change our position on homosexual practice. Yet that argument can be used arbitrarily for any and every belief and practice promoted in Scripture, for it takes no account of whether substantive points of correspondence exist apart from the desire of the interpreter to deviate from Scripture.

The better analogy is between slavery and support for homosexual practice, for those who argue for the latter on the basis of a “born that way” philosophy are promoting slavery to the desires of the flesh. And still better analogies are the Bible’s stance on incest and the New Testament opposition to polygamy since the reasons why these behaviors are proscribed are related to, or derived from, a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations. As you must know, when one uses remote analogues (here, slavery) and ignores more proximate analogues (incest and polyamory) one shows poor analogical reasoning.