So issues like LGBT and abortion never came up? What about people living non religious life vs people living religious life?
Issues like sodomy or vice or lust never came up? If the state was not religious how did it deal with religious issues?
Was Ancient Rome non religious and more liberal on these social issues? Was there lots of debates and protests over this?
Based upon what little I know of ancient Rome, some senators and others within the general public, looked down upon the Greek habit of what they referred to as "boy love," (homosexuality). That said, we know some of Rome's Emperors dabbled with an occasional male on male sex.
While ancient Rome had slavery (sex and race were irrelevant), the slaves could work towards freedom and citizenship.
As for religion, it kind of depended upon who the emperor would be at the time. Once Christianity began creeping into ancient Rome, it was looked upon unfavorably. The Roman Senate and Emperors saw Christianity was a religion that was proselytizing and claiming that there should never be violence. Whereas, the core of the Roman Empire was built on war and conquest for the purposes of riches and territory and thus Christians were considered a threat to Rome's Imperialism. Religions like the religion of Egypt weren't seen as a threat and was not interfering with Roman's beliefs and further it was confined to Egypt's sphere of influence only.
On a separate note, once Alexander conquered Egypt, and placed a Macedonian Ptolemy on the throne, the Ptolemy's, even though they were Macedonians, didn't attempt to change Egypt's religion and referred to themselves as Pharaohs, as did the ancient Egyptians. They did however, consider the Egyptians they ruled over, as inferior to Macedonians and no matter what is claimed about Cleopatra, she was the first Macedonian rulers that actually spoke Egyptian and Macedonian and not Egyptian and thus of Greek blood, not African, as her mother was also a Macedonian.
