Back in the day virtually anyone educated could claim to be a priest. There was no powerful central authority, but MANY people tried to impersonate priests and would do non-official rituals. Frankly I could have put on a robe and a cross, gone to a different city, f*cked 10 women in the ass, and said god was in favor of sodomy and polygamy. Now if this practice got big enough, the church would convene a conference to debate whether it should be allowed. Presumably the homosexual rituals never became prevalent enough to warrant a big meeting of the minds.

Also I am leery of using loosely translated Greek as "evidence" that the church thought gay marriage was fine.

The old testament states pretty clearly that a man having sex with a man was as abhorrent as a man having sex with an animal. The new testament takes a similar, but less graphic, stance.

Finally, if you thought this could stand up to real scrutiny, don't you think it would have made it to the mainstream progressive press by now? It hasn't because they don't want to publish something that will get ripped to threads by any moderate historian or theologian.

EDIT: This is not meant to sound mean. I for one favor civil liberties for homosexuals but saying the church supported it is simply wrong.