Crusader,
Knowing the nature of man, do you think that a book of this magnitude would get put together without machinations of men. Errant men chose what books would be included, errant man interprets it (my word), the applications (your word) are made by errant man, the translations from original Hebrew/Greek were made by errant translators.
For example, Mark allows no reason for divorce. Matthew allows it on the basis of adultery (or in some translations, for unlawful marriage, which I suppose would include fraud). Either one or the other misquoted or it was mistranslated. So either here we have inconsistency (which is it?) or we are relying on errant translation being that most of us are not able to read the texts in original language, even assuming the original documents were available to us.
Referring to another thread, God did a lot of smiting in the Old Testament, none in the new. You could make a case, as you have, that capital punishment is allowed. I could make a case that it is not allowed. You provide your scriptural rationale. I provide my scriptural rationale. I could be right or wrong, so could you. If someone says, "the way I interpret it", I can't fault them. The statement is coming with a disclaimer. If someone says definitively, this is God's intent on this issue, that is playing God, isn't it?