So you are without defense, O man - everyone who judges - An Answer To What Do You Mean By "Long Argument"

IT MIGHT BE BEST to start with a short argument, or a short part of a much longer argument Romans 1:25-2:3

1:25 They who exchanged God's truth for a lie and adored and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator who is blessed unto the ages; amen.  Thus God delivered them to the passions of disgrace;  for even their females exchanged natural use for what is contrary to nature,  And the males also, in the same way, abandoning natural use with the female, burned in their longing for one another, males performing shameful acts upon males,  and receiving in turn within themselves the requital befitting their deviancy.  And as they did not deem it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God surrendered them to a reprobate mind, to do indecent things, Having been filled with every injustice, wickedness, avarice, vice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, boorishness; whisperers, Slanderers, haters of God, licentious, overweening, braggarts, contrivers of evils, defiant of parents;  Witless, faithless, ruthless, merciless - Though knowing God's decree that those who do such things are deserving of death, they do not only do them, but give approval for those engaging in the same practices.

2 So you are without defense, O man - everyone who judges - for in that you judge another you condemn yourself; because you who judge engage in the same practices.  But we know that God's judgement on those doing such tings is in accord with truth.  And do you, O man - you who judge those doing such things while also doing them - reckon that you will escape God's judgement?

As an LGBTQ+ man who has heard a very small part of that passage used for my entire life to condemn gay men and Lesbians, two verses out of the entire complex describing universal behaviors, most of that catalog aimed directly at LGBTQ+ People by straight People, the directly following universalization of sin by Paul WHO IS PRESUMABLY ADDRESSING WHAT WOULD NOW BE CALLED HETEROSEXUALS when he says they're no less implicated in sin than those they condemn.  And he, himself was doing in that passage exactly what he condemned as indefensible, judging others.  Also, as some LGBTQ+ affirming scripture scholars and theologians point out, the reference to what Paul is accusing Women of doing is entirely ambiguous and the males he is accusing of "abandoning natural use with the female" has little to nothing to do with those of us who never had sex with a Woman, or were married to a Woman and who don't practice promiscuity or what would be called "unsafe sex" with another man in a committed, monogamous partnership.  

I would say they are guilty of what Paul says leads to depravity, exchanging God's truth for a lie.  As I have been pointing out, lying is rampant in the United States, especially on the right, in no group more so than the so-called "evangelical" and "trad-Catholic" cults, and as Paul more than  hinted at, you can expect those resulting sins to be found flourishing among them.  And you do.  There are no bigger liars in my country than those who share in hatred against LGBTQ+ People and who advocate discrimination and , yes, violence against us, up to and including murdering us.  

The Pauline literature is full of just such passages in which a line or sentence is dishonestly plucked out of a larger point to slander someone or some group while ignoring the point of the argument.  Or to distort the Gospels and the New Testament.  I accuse Martin Luther of doing that on his "faith alone" distortion and Augustine on predestination and eternal damnation.  The history of Christianity has frequently turned into a horror show because of those.  In each of those cases, by the fruit of their actions and statements you will know them.  

One of the things you can bet on with those who do that, they have absolutely no intention of applying what Paul said to their lives and are even less interested in applying what Jesus said to themselves.  The "white evangelicals" the "traditional-Catholics" what the American media has distorted Christianity into meaning are Olympic level practitioners of that kind of hypocrisy, that's not unusual.  

Lest it be lost on anyone PAUL WAS ADDRESSING THE SAME THING AMONG THOSE DEPUTED TO BE CHRISTIANS IN HIS LETTERS.  What is different now is that LGBTQ+ People are pointing out that our sexual orientation doesn't remove us from the possibility of doing better than the heterosexuals who Paul was addressing while being true to who we are.  Just as Women who insist on going beyond what Paul could imagine or, as I'd put it, what he could imagine would ever be acceptable or those who were and are held in slavery do the same thing, the substance of Paul's whole point is not only good but essential.  

Paul certainly didn't claim to be infallible, he didn't claim that his understanding in this life was perfect.  When he was wrong about something or somewhat wrong, the results are far short of what he intended.  When he was right he was right and it makes no sense to abandon everything he said for the few things in which he wasn't able to imagine something better and more broad than his own radical mind could encompass given that he, like all of us, had his limits.  When Paul is read in church some might say "The Word of God," but Paul didn't say that was what he was writing, at least I don't recall it without going through the entire corpus to check that point.