>You could claim to prove all those things if you took as you do scriptures out of context
>attempting to have them stand on their own, without putting them together with the rest of the
>Bible

See, that's just what I mean. When you believe something that can be supported by a plain reading of an isolated bit of the Bible, then you'll go with a plain reading of an isolated bit of a Bible. When you believe something that would be contradicted by a plain reading of an isolated bit of the Bible (e.g., your belief that it's not an abomination to eat shellfish), then you won't agree to a plain reading of an isolated bit of the Bible, and will instead come up with poetic reading, or you'll hunt around the rest of the Bible looking for something that contradicts the part you don't like.

Thus, through its sheer size and wealth of self-contradictory and vague material, the Bible can mean anything you want it to mean. You can view it as justifying legal discrimination against gays, and I can view it as justifying laws against the accumulation of wealth (since a camel could pass through a needle more easily than a rich man can get into heaven). Neither of us would be right or wrong. We'd both just be playing the same Rorshach-test game, seeing only what we bring to it, in what is, in the end, a fundamentally meaningless document.