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It doesn’t actually say slaves, it says ‘bondmen and bondmaids’. People who were poor bonded themselves or their children to someone wealthy. It was a form of social security. The concept of slavery as known in modern terms was referred to by Moses as “bondage”. It is also written (Exod 21:16) that anyone who steals a man to sell him shall be put to death.

Look at the context of a bible verse in order to interpret its meaning. In Leviticus 18, homosexuality is one of three sins mentioned, each given equal precedence as sinful. In order, God condemns child sacrifice (shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire), homosexuality (shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind), and bestiality (Neither shalt thou lie with any beast).

God then groups all three sins under the same warning: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you. In other words, God said “I destroyed the other nations that used to be in this land because of these sins, and the same warning applies to you”!

IF we are to say that homosexuality was given equal billing with child sacrifice and bestiality, and IF we are to believe that homosexuality is now acceptable to God in this current age, then we must believe that child sacrifice and bestiality are also acceptable in our current age. You cannot have it both ways: either homosexuality, bestiality, and child sacrifice are forever sinful abominable acts in God’s sight, or all three are acceptable “alternative lifestyles.”

A conservative, common sense interpretation of Leviticus 18 demands that we understand that all three acts were and are sinful in God’s sight, contrary to His Will for mankind.

Leviticus 20 is even more specific. The sins listed as forbidden are, in order, adultery (adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death), incest (man that lieth with his father’s wife), non related incest (man lie with his daughter-in-law), homosexuality (man also lie with mankind), and intra-family fornication (man take a wife and her mother). All are given equal billing. All are equally evil in God’s eyes. If homosexuality was only temporarily forbidden, then we can conclude that incest between parent and child is now acceptable. How foolish! None of these sins were temporarily forbidden, all were and are abominations in God’s sight.

As to the Homosexual theologian charge that the dietary laws would have to be enforced if we enforce the Levitical code against homosexuality, this is mere smoke and mirrors. First, the dietary laws are not even represented in these Bible texts.

Second, the dietary laws were just that, dietary laws, they were not moral laws (which the above texts represent).

God Himself rescinded the dietary laws for the sake of the Gentiles.

The dietary laws were abolished in Peter’s vision (Acts 10.14-15).

Among other things abolished in the new testament: Circumcision, ritual washing, crop mingling, blended fabrics, animal sacrifice for the atonement of sin etc..
God never rescinded the moral laws against the sins listed in Leviticus 18, in particular, the sin of homosexuality.