Actually, I did not quote Rav Kook, I simply mentioned that he too was vegetarian, so I am on solid footing.
(By the way, many murderers do in fact wear pants, but most murderers are male!)
I have not read Rav Kook’s sefer and therefore cannot comment on his prohibition on pants. I have, however, read his 1919 teshuva stating that women should not vote. First, he clearly states in the beginning of the document that he is not really qualified to address the issue and is only writing an opinion because he was asked to by others. Second, remember that he did write this in 1919, at the peak of the women’s suffrage movement. His belief that women should not vote was founded on fears that he had of what such a step would lead to, as outlined later in the document. With the benefit of the passage of time, we can clearly see that these fears were, thankfully, not realized.
I won’t deny that I am influenced by modern society, and sometimes I unconsciously draw conclusions about what is right based on modernity and then have issues when this conflicts with Torah ideas of what is right. I am dealing with this in my own way and I believe that it is an inevitable problem; we just all have it to different degrees. I admire you for sticking by one posek even when you don’t agree with him. But that’s just it- there are instances where you don’t agree with him, where what he says intuitively feels wrong to you! Where do you think this intuitive feeling comes from? Even if you ignore the feeling, you can’t get away from the fact that it exists.
I am not yet a parent, but I can well imagine the tremendous feeling of conflict that faced Avraham Avinu in this week’s parsha. Even putting aside the fact that Hashem had said that an entire nation would come out of Avraham through the line of Yitzchak- who did not have any offspring at the time of the Akeidah- how could Avraham raise his hand to slay his own child? Ideally, we should strive to be on Avraham’s level and have complete faith, but this is not always possible. Child sacrifice is one of those things that seems intuitively and undoubtedly wrong. Yet Avraham accepted it without question. If I were in his position, I think I would fail this test utterly, as would most of today’s Jews.
So, to answer your question directly, I’ll admit that I do “pick and choose” at times, but I would never do something that all poskim unanimously prohibit. (For example, secular society clearly sees nothing wrong with premarital relations, but I recognize that there is no allowance for this within a Torah framework and therefore would not ever consider engaging in such relations.) I would like to be in a place where I can be more consistent in my observance of halacha, and this is something that I am working on, but I am simply not there yet.