Idolatry in the context of Romans 1

"Malus omnia in malum vertit, etiam quae cum specie optimi venerant"

Seneca

God loves His sons and daughters. Because He is a loving father, He sometimes has to chasten His children so they keep going in a straight path. If He doesn't, then we are not His children but illegitimate, bastards (Hebrews 12:5-8). Worse, we are children of Satan (John 8:44) because we do not do the will of God, which is in our best benefit (Romans 12:2). As we fall short to His glory, and we don't repent, He gives us up to the Enemy, so we can experience the whole spectrum of consequences of our actions; that's what the parable of the Lost Son is about (Luke 15:11-32): He let us go to experience a self-conducted (as opposed to conducted by the will of God), godless life, but always waiting for our return so there can be celebration in Heavens. That explains why Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 and 1 Timothy 1 speaks about handing over people to Satan as a corrective experience: we are so stubborn in resisting the one and perfect will of God, that there is no other choice but to let us go for us to see the real dimension of what we wish to do. We want something so badly that we cannot longer hear the voice of God but the crave; we renounce His will so ours can take place, and we like it. And that is the essence of idolatry: to want, love something more than God Himself, to put Him aside so we do what we desire. He is so loving that He doesn't oblige us to do what He wants but let us go, it's our choice and He respects it. He is so loving He even waits there for our return to welcome us with arms wide open to His kingdom.

All that is what Romans 1 is about. People wanting something so blindly they forgot about God and engaged in what they wished to do. Knowledge, money, power, pleasure, anything... Those are not bad things. The Scriptures even encourage us to pursue those things (please, read the Song of Solomon before you misinterpret me holding some prude perspective). The bad thing is to want some of those more than God, because it'd break one of the two commandments we Christians have: love God above everything else. I think that would also explain why Paul says "for the pure, all things are pure" (Titus 1:15). People often take this passage as Paul talking about foods, but it says "all things", which I think includes circumcision and all other ceremonial laws. As Barnes noted: "The principle of the declaration is, that a pure mind - a truly pious mind - will not regard the distinctions of food and drink; of festivals, rites, ceremonies, and days, as necessary to be observed in order to promote its purity. The conscience is not to be burdened and enslaved by these things, but is to be controlled only by the moral laws which God has ordained. [...] But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure - Everything is made the means of increasing their depravity." As we do things that are sanctified, we can see the fruits of it, because sin always reveals its true nature (John 8:44).

So what the Christians in Rome did was apostasy. They liked what they did more than God, and it came with consequences. He didn't inflict a curse over them for their actions, He just gave them up to what was already there. We should avoid that: be so stubborn to God with something He doesn't have another choice but to leave us to experience the consequences.

Couples in the context of Genesis 2

The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:24 NET (emphasis mine)

And God Almighty and Perfect created man, the original human being. But His original creation had a tiny detail: he was neither man nor woman, he was Adam. God hadn't created woman, so how could He create a gender-differentiated being if there was no other one with whom he could couple.

He put the man in this beautiful garden, where Adam saw trees and their fruit, and those were pleasant to look and good for food. The man felt they were good, he naturally knew it, that's why they were pleasant; there was something in him that knew he could eat from them. And then God gave him the freedom to eat from any tree, but the one in the middle.

Then God saw something: the man was by himself, alone but not in the sense of loneliness, God was with him. The Hebrew word that's been translated as "companion" in many bible versions actually means "helper", "one who does what we cannot do by ourselves". If analysed in the context, we see that after that realization, God wanted to create a helper, a companion for man that would help him with the labor God entrusted: to care for the garden. 

But it wasn't going to be any creature that Adam could find the one who was going to be his companion, it had to be one suited for him, complementary to him, not in the context of sexuality --the man was not gender differentiated yet, so that companion wasn't a sexual one. That's why, in order to find a partner for Adam, God brought before him all kinds of animals. There's an interesting thing here: God brought all these creatures before Adam for him to choose. God could've made a perfect companion right away and give it to Adam, but instead He delegated that responsibility to man. 

The Scriptures say that after naming all creatures, a suitable companion was not found, so we can deduce that God and Adam expected to find one among the creatures. He didn't, so God made woman and brought her to him. When Adam saw her, he said "this one at last [...]". After all, God did made him an adequate companion because Adam was happy with it, he saw she was suitable, she was like him, related to him, thus he gave her a name.

It is because all that that the man leaves his parents' home and comes to live with his wife and make a family, because Adam was pleased with the companion that was made for him (the scholars of the NET bible translation agree that the word flesh at the end of verse 24 really means 'kin' or 'family', as explained by the ancient OT custom of calling relatives flesh of my flesh). God knew what he needed and he liked it because it was the woman the one who was made for the man, not the other way around (1 Corinthians 11:8-9). I think that also explains why Jesus said that eunuchs don't have to live with women (Matthew 19:10-12): if they don't find them suitable companions, they don't have to deal with them.

Some times I wonder, if the man had found dogs to be better help for him, women would've never existed, and it would be just Adam and his dogs the ones running the world! So, Genesis 2 is not a story of romantic love, how sex came to be, or other fleshy things, but one of partnership, about finding someone suitable to be our complement, someone like ourselves with whom have a lot of offspring that could help us run the planet. Let's remember this all came to happen so we could accomplish God's very first commandment to Adam: "take care of my garden."