Are we pretending that Christians actually read, understand, and follow the teachings of the Bible?

They only seem to weaponize whatever part fits their interests and ignore everything else.

They stretch whatever meaning is there to whatever they want it to say, and bludgeon people with it, verbally and legally.

I haven't read the whole thing or anything, but I'm pretty sure that there's like one passage that mentions anything remotely "gay", which, IIRC, says something to the effect of, a man should not lay with another man the way he lays with a woman. Which can mean all kinds of things, including that lesbians are cool, but men being gay isn't. That's just one way to take it. Another could be regarding jamming your dangly bits together, so docking is bad, but everything else is fine.

Then in later passages where the text pretty overtly forbids a thing (such as eating certain foods), or explicitly tells you to do something, such as help the needy, those things get completely ignored.

Modern Christianity is basically a mishmash of "fine, do whatever you want!" And cherry picking verses that should be followed, ignoring the rest.