Wow, I'm away for a few months, and look where things go!
I keep thinking back on the original thread, which was about whether gay marriage was American or not . . . and I see that this has moved into a discussion about whether it's CHRISTIAN or not. hmmm. Well, on one hand, I'm glad to see the focus is not so America-centric. On the other hand, I'd have to argue that for Americans, at least, whether it is Christian or not has little bearing on whether it's American or not, as this is not supposed to be a theocratic society.
But even if one wanted to argue the Christianity of it, I find that so many of these kinds of issues just cannot be solved conclusively because there are some who accept the Bible at face value and those who do not. You cannot use the Bible to prove anything when people are starting with a different outlook on the conclusiveness of the book. I, myself, find many an answer in the first and greatest commandment being, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart . . . and the second is like unto it--love your neighbor as yourself." However these ideas are not unique to Christianity, and neither is the idea that you should not do things to other people that you don't like done to yourself. These, to me, seem more important than all the other things, and they are things that just about any religion can agree with, as well as both those who are Biblical literalists and those who are not. If you leave out the part about God, I think even atheists can agree with them.
Why don't we stick with these and make sure we can do them well first? Even if these basic ideas do not give us the answers on this issue (and perhaps they might), they at least give guidelines on how to carry out the discussion.
And coming back to the "American" part of the original thread, I'd point out that there are about as many opinions on what is truly "American" as there are on what is truly "Christian." It is unfortunate, however, that those who argue about what a true American is have usually not done very much real reading about the founding of the country or the opinions and arguments of the founders (and perhaps their views on Christianity.)
It might be interesting to move away from quoting scriptures and begin quoting Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and others. The original laws of this country may have supported making homosexuality illegal, but they also supported making slavery legal. Kind of doesn't jive with the statement, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." At least in the case of "American-ness" it is very helpful to try to ascertain the SPIRIT of what is being said, as opposed to the letter of the laws, which were designed to evolve. I believe the true American spirit is to be found in the overall concepts, rather than the details, which are bound to evolve as understanding of humanity evolves.
The evolution away from slavery was not easy, nor was it pretty, especially as slavery itself is supported by the Bible. I would say that slavery is pretty unAmerican, so the conclusion that I would draw is that whether the Bible supports it or not is not necessarily relevant to its American-ness. And as this is not a theocratic society, and the founding fathers were very deliberate about NOT having a state religion, we need to try to find common denominators that can be accepted by many people, not just Christians.
I can think of some rampantly awful things going on either in our country or by our country that are, in my opinion, horribly unChristian, and many would argue, unAmerican. Perhaps it is my own version of Christianity (not mainstream, perhaps?) that feels that it is crucially, incredibly, unspeakably more important to worry about innocent people being killed and tortured and suffering, and the fact that so many Americans can not get health care, than to worry that two men or two women might love one another, and God forbid, even KISS one another, or even worse they might express their love physically. I think artillery and bombs and greedy love of money probably have caused untold more suffering in this world than two people of the same gender could ever cause by what they do with their genitals.